AX.25 in user space

The Linux kernel AX.25 implementation (and userspace) is pretty poor. I’ve encountered many problems. E.g.:

  • you can’t read() and write() from the same socket at the same time

  • DGRAM receiving just plain doesn’t work.

  • CRC settings default such that at least all my radios (and direwolf) drop the first two packets sent. (fix with kissparms radio -c 1)

  • Setting CRC mode resets all other settings.

  • On 64bit Raspberry Pi OS setsockopt for some flags don’t take effect at all (e.g. setting AX25_EXTSEQ), and treat other obvious correct ones as invalid (e.g. can’t set AX25_WINDOW to any value at all).

  • I also get kernel null pointer dereferences on 32bit Raspberry Pi OS when testing AX.25. Not exactly comforting.

  • Other OSs don’t have AX.25 socket support. E.g. OpenBSD. And it’s not obvious to me that this is best solved in kernel space.

  • It doesn’t seem clear to anyone how the AX.25 stack in the kernel is supposed to work. E.g. should axparms -assoc be an enforcing ACL? It’s not, but is it supposed to be?

  • I’ve also seen suggestions that AX.25 should be ripped out of the Linux kernel. Continue reading

New Cisco/Intel feature provides troubleshooting-data from Intel Wi-Fi endpoints

Cisco and Intel have extended their technology relationship to enable Cisco Wi-Fi gear to gather data from Intel-based PCs in order to troubleshoot and optimize wireless connections for end-user machines.The companies announced Intel Connectivity Analytics, a feature that helps to evaluate Wi-Fi connectivity and for IT teams to monitor wireless resources.[Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters.] The feature is supported by Intel-based PCs deployed with Wi-Fi 6/6E chipsets and Cisco Wi-Fi offerings including the Cisco Catalyst 9800 series wireless-controller family, its Embedded Wireless Controller, and the full range of Meraki cloud-managed access points.To read this article in full, please click here

New Cisco/Intel feature provides troubleshooting data from Intel Wi-Fi endpoints

Cisco and Intel have extended their technology relationship to enable Cisco Wi-Fi gear to gather data from Intel-based PCs in order to troubleshoot and optimize wireless connections for end-user machines.The companies announced Intel Connectivity Analytics, a feature that helps to evaluate Wi-Fi connectivity and for IT teams to monitor wireless resources.[Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters.] The feature is supported by Intel-based PCs deployed with Wi-Fi 6/6E chipsets and Cisco Wi-Fi offerings including the Cisco Catalyst 9800 series wireless-controller family, its Embedded Wireless Controller, and the full range of Meraki cloud-managed access points.To read this article in full, please click here

Learn How Real-World Organizations Benefited from an Overhaul of their Security Lifestyle 

Achieving better security is something we all know is necessary but can struggle to get there. It’s like improving your diet: you know you need to eat better and exercise to cultivate a healthier, more well-rounded lifestyle. But you don’t do it because it’s hard, often expensive, and can be a pain. So, you avoid it (trust me, we’ve all been there). But, you learn that putting one foot in front of the other forces you to take small steps toward big results. The same notion applies to needing better security. We know we need it, but it’s not always easy to know where to begin.    

There is no quick fix for sustainable change. Sure, we can make better choices each day, but it takes consistency and a solid structural foundation – a lifestyle change – to maintain these advancements. Losing weight is one thing; when it comes to better multi-cloud security, this is a process that leaves little room for fluctuation. Start with the fundamentals and tighten your belt over time.   

Let’s take a look at real-world organizations that have benefitted from doing the hard stuff. They’ve done the work and have seen the results. Continue reading

Top500 Supercomputers: Hungry For The Exascale Feast

Let’s just cut right to the chase scene. The latest Top500 ranking of supercomputers, announced today at the SC21 supercomputing conference being held in St Louis, needed the excitement of an actual 1 exaflops sustained performance machine running the High Performance Linpack benchmark at 64-bit precision.

Top500 Supercomputers: Hungry For The Exascale Feast was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller 12

Good day every one,

As you certainly know, we are now rebranding DCNM 11 to Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller, consequently, NDFC 12 is the new acronym to automate and operate NX-OS based fabrics

It is NOT just about changing the name, there are several significant changes with NDFC 12. To list few of them:

  • Enhanced Topology View
  • Ability to modify switch discovery IP
  • Flexible CLI option – config profile or native NXOS CLI
  • Performance Programmable reports
  • Granular RBAC
  • Secure POAP User
  • Simplified and flexible Image Management
  • Server Smart Licensing
  • Automate IOS-XR configuration
  • Automate VXLAN EVPN fabric deployment with Cat9k

One of the key evolution in regard to NDFC is that it now joins the ecosystem of services that runs natively on top of the common Nexus dashboard platform.

One of the key advantages for the network operators with this evolution, is that they just need a single experience, it doesn’t really matter what application you run, from the installation process to the common Web GUI. All applications or services look with the same logic behind any requests.

You have a single pane of glass which is the Nexus dashboard platform through which the end-user can consume different applications for the Continue reading

Tech Bytes: Containerlab Makes Container And VM Networking Labs Easy (Sponsored)

Today on the Tech Bytes podcast we discuss Containerlab, open-source software that lets you build virtual network labs on a server or even a laptop. It supports a variety of network OSs for network emulation, training, and testing. Containerlab was developed by Nokia, our sponsor for this episode.

The post Tech Bytes: Containerlab Makes Container And VM Networking Labs Easy (Sponsored) appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Thoughts on Auto Disaggregation and Complexity

Way in the past, the EIGRP team (including me) had an interesting idea–why not aggregate routes automatically as much as possible, along classless bounds, and then deaggregate routes when we could detect some failure was causing a routing black hole? To understand this concept better, consider the network below.

In this network, B and C are connected to four different routers, each of which is advertising a different subnet. In turn, B and C are aggregating these four routes into 2001:db8:3e8:10::/60, and advertising this aggregate towards A. From a control plane state perspective, this is a major win. The obvious gain is that the amount of state is reduced from four routes to one. The less obvious gain is A doesn’t need to know about any changes in the state for the four destinations aggregated into the /60. Depending on how often these links change state, the reduction in the rate of change is, perhaps, more important than the reduction in the amount of control plane state.

We always know there will be a tradeoff when reducing state; what is the tradeoff here? If C somehow loses its connection to one of the four routers, say the router advertising 11::/64, Continue reading

Nvidia announces new InfiniBand networking hardware

Networking equipment was the news of the day at Nvidia’s GPU Technology Conference (GTC), with new hardware for improved end-to-end performance.Nvidia announced the Quantum-2 platform, a 400Gbps InfiniBand networking platform consisting of the Quantum-2 switch, ConnectX-7 network adapter, BlueField-3 data processing unit (DPU), and all the software to support the new architecture.[Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters.] At 400Gbps, NVIDIA Quantum-2 InfiniBand doubles the network speed and triples the number of network ports over the Quantum-1 product. With a three-fold performance increase in performance, data-center fabric switches can be reduced by six-fold, cutting data center power consumption and reducing the overall data center space by 7%, the company says.To read this article in full, please click here

Nvidia announces new InfiniBand networking hardware

Networking equipment was the news of the day at Nvidia’s GPU Technology Conference (GTC), with new hardware for improved end-to-end performance.Nvidia announced the Quantum-2 platform, a 400Gbps InfiniBand networking platform consisting of the Quantum-2 switch, ConnectX-7 network adapter, BlueField-3 data processing unit (DPU), and all the software to support the new architecture.[Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters.] At 400Gbps, NVIDIA Quantum-2 InfiniBand doubles the network speed and triples the number of network ports over the Quantum-1 product. With a three-fold performance increase in performance, data-center fabric switches can be reduced by six-fold, cutting data center power consumption and reducing the overall data center space by 7%, the company says.To read this article in full, please click here

Rethinking the WAN: Zero Trust network access can play a bigger role

The WAN as initially conceived was about one simple job: the WAN was the network that “connects my sites to each other.” That is, the network connecting users in corporate sites to corporate IT resources in other corporate sites or perhaps colocation facilities. It was all inside-to-inside traffic.Over the past decade so much has changed that, just before COVID-19 work-from-home mandates took hold, only about 37% of a typical WAN’s traffic was still inside-to-inside, according to Nemertes’ “Next Generation Networks Research Study 2020-2021”. The rest touched the outside world, either originating there as with remote work against data-center systems or terminating there as with SaaS use from a company site or both as with VPNing into the network only to head back out to a SaaS app.To read this article in full, please click here

Rethinking the WAN: Zero Trust network access can play a bigger role

The WAN as initially conceived was about one simple job: the WAN was the network that “connects my sites to each other.” That is, the network connecting users in corporate sites to corporate IT resources in other corporate sites or perhaps colocation facilities. It was all inside-to-inside traffic.Over the past decade so much has changed that, just before COVID-19 work-from-home mandates took hold, only about 37% of a typical WAN’s traffic was still inside-to-inside, according to Nemertes’ “Next Generation Networks Research Study 2020-2021”. The rest touched the outside world, either originating there as with remote work against data-center systems or terminating there as with SaaS use from a company site or both as with VPNing into the network only to head back out to a SaaS app.To read this article in full, please click here

Network Break 359: Arista Increases Its 400G Switch Portfolio; Nvidia Accelerates InfiniBand

This week's Network Break examines new 400G switches from Arista, discusses the Wi-Fi Alliance's certification program for the HaLow long-range low-power standard, targets key Nvidia announcements, catches up on the latest in space networking, and more IT news.

The post Network Break 359: Arista Increases Its 400G Switch Portfolio; Nvidia Accelerates InfiniBand appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Automation controller workflow deployment as code

Background: The Automation Controller Collection

The Automation Controller Collection allows Ansible Playbooks to automate the interaction with automation controller. For example, manually interacting via the Web-based UI or the API can now be automated just as the targets it manages.

This Collection provides a programmatic way to create, update or delete automation controller objects as well as perform tasks such as run jobs, change configurations and much more. This article discusses new updates to this Collection, as well as an example playbook and details on how to run it successfully.

The ansible.controller Ansible Collection is the downstream supported distribution available on Ansible automation hub, made to work with Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform 2.  The awx.awx Collection is the upstream community distribution available on Ansible Galaxy.  For more details on the difference between Ansible Galaxy and Ansible automation hub, please refer to Ajay Chenampara’s blog post.

In this post, we are use the ansible.controller Collection, but this can be replaced with the legacy ansible.tower or the awx.awx Collection depending on the user’s needs.

 

Using the Collection with Workflows

One of the goals of the Automation Controller Collection is to allow users to Continue reading

Introducing Relational Database Connectors

Introducing Relational Database Connectors
Introducing Relational Database Connectors

At Cloudflare, we’re building the best compute platform in the world. We want to make it easy, seamless, and obvious to build your applications with us. But simply making the best compute platform is not enough — at the heart of your applications are the data they interact with.

Cloudflare has multiple data storage solutions available today: Workers KV, R2, and Durable Objects. All three follow Cloudflare’s design goals for Workers: global by default, infinitely scalable, and delightful for developers to use. We’ve partnered with third-party storage solutions like Fauna, MongoDB and Prisma, who have built data platforms that align beautifully with our design goals and written tutorials for databases that already support HTTP connections.

The one area that’s been sorely missed: relational databases. Cloudflare itself runs on relational databases, and we’re not alone. In April, we asked which Node libraries you wanted us to support, and four of the top five requests were related to databases. For this Full Stack Week, we asked ourselves: how could we support relational databases in a way that aligned with our design goals?

Today, we’re taking a first step towards that world by announcing support for relational databases, including Postgres and Continue reading

Developer Spotlight: Winning a Game Jam with Jamstack and Durable Objects

Developer Spotlight: Winning a Game Jam with Jamstack and Durable Objects
Developer Spotlight: Winning a Game Jam with Jamstack and Durable Objects

Welcome to a new blog post series called Developer Spotlight. In this series we will be showcasing interesting applications built on top of the Cloudflare Workers Ecosystem.

And to celebrate Durable Objects going GA, what better to kick off the series than with a really cool tech demo of Durable Objects called Full Tilt?

Full Tilt by Guido Zuidhof is a game jam entry for Ludum Dare, one of the biggest and oldest game jams around, where he won first place in the innovation category. A game jam is like a hackathon for games, where you have a very short amount of time (usually 48-72 hours) to create a game from scratch.

We love Full Tilt, not just because Guido used Workers and Durable Objects to build a cool game where you control a game on your computer via your phone, but especially because it shows how powerful Durable Objects are. In less than 48 hours Guido was able to write all the logic to instantly spin up a personal gaming server anywhere in the world, as close to that player as possible. And it is so fast that you feel like you are controlling the computer directly.

But Continue reading