Introducing Smart Edge Revalidation

Today we’re excited to announce Smart Edge Revalidation. It was designed to ensure that compute resources are synchronized efficiently between our edge and a browser. Right now, as many as 30% of objects cached on Cloudflare’s edge do not have the HTTP response headers required for revalidation. This can result in unnecessary origin calls. Smart Edge Revalidation fixes this: it does the work to ensure that these headers are present, even when an origin doesn’t send them to us. The advantage of this? There’s less wasted bandwidth and compute for objects that do not need to be redownloaded. And there are faster browser page loads for users.

So What Is Revalidation?

Revalidation is one part of a longer story about efficiently serving objects that live on an origin server from an intermediary cache. Visitors to a website want it to be fast. One foundational way to make sure that a website is fast for visitors is to serve objects from cache. In this way, requests and responses do not need to transit unnecessary parts of the Internet back to an origin and, instead, can be served from a data center that is closer to the visitor. As such, website operators Continue reading

LISP – OMP – BGP EVPN Interoperability – Part III: SD-WAN Control Plane

Introduction

Figure 2-1 shows the Control Plane operation when host EP1 using IP 172.16.100.10/32 joins the network. In the previous chapter, we saw how Edge-xTR-11 learned the IP address and registered it to MapSrv-22 by using the LISP Map-register Message where the Instance-Id 100 represents Virtual Network-Id (VN-Id). MapSrv-22, in turn, advertised the NLRI to Border-PxTR-13 as BGP VPNv4 Update message where extended community RT 1:100 (=VN-Id) is used as a kind of VPN identifier (BGP VPNv4 route import/export policy is based on RT value). This chapter first explains how Border-PxTR-13 sends BGP IPv4 Update message to local SD-WAN device vEdge-1. The eBGP peering between Border-PxTR-13 and vEdge1 is VRF based and BGP updates over it don’t carry any VN-Id. vEdge-1 imports the routing information from BRIB to RIB. Then it advertises the routing information by using OMP (Overlay Management Protocol) to the SD-WAN centralized Control Plane vSmart over the DTLS tunnel using System-IP as an originator-Id and VPN label 1003 as a VN-Id. vSmart forwards this update to SD-WAN device vEdge-2 located in Datacenter. vEdge-2 installs the route into the routing table. After that, it exports the routing information from the RIB to the BGP process and sends the BGP IPv4 Update message to Border-Leaf-13 over VRF NWKT eBGP peering without VN-Id.

Figure 2-1: Overall Control-Plane Operation.

Comcast Business rolls out wireless service for SMBs

Cable giant Comcast has extended its mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) services for consumers to small and midsize businesses under the brand Comcast Business Mobile.Comcast already provides a consumer mobility service called Xfinity Mobile. Verizon and Comcast launched the Xfinity Mobile service in 2017. Like Xfinity Mobile, Comcast Business Mobile offers 4G and 5G coverage from Verizon’s mobile network as well as Wi-Fi hotspots to fill in coverage.The service offers Comcast Business Internet customers up to 10 lines with no line access fees. Customers are required to get broadband service from Comcast.There's an unlimited plan that supports graduated pricing, starting at $45 per month for one line, $30 per line per month for four lines, and $24 per line per month for 10 lines. Comcast describes the unlimited plan as ideal for on-the-go employees who may not be within Wi-Fi range and need cellular data.To read this article in full, please click here

Network Break Quick Take – New Video Series

New video series Network Break Quick Take

Crystal Notes: Hashes

Hashes in Crystal are a collection of key/value pairs of defined types. Creating a hash # Deduce the type signature of a hash. typeof(stuff_and_things) # => Hash(String, String) # To create an empty hash, you must define # the intended type of its key/value pairs. # There are 2 ways to define...continue reading

Crystal Notes: Variables

Like most languages, variables in Crystal are defined with the = operator. Considerations Variable types are inferred by the compiler and do not have to be specifically defined. When a variable type is declared, it must be assigned a value before it can be accessed. There are no global...continue reading

Crystal Notes: Arrays

Arrays in Crystal are an ordered collection of elements, generally of the same type. Although, it is possible to have an array of multiple types. Creating an array Iterating an Array Accessing Elements Array Operations Static Arrays If the size of an array is fixed it is much more...continue reading

FAQ: What in the wireless world is CBRS?

First off, CBRS is an acronym for Citizens Broadband Radio Service, and the upshot for IT pros is that it’s enabling enterprises to build their own private 4G/5G networks and result in improved 4G/5G offerings from service providers. Here’s a primer on CBRS—because you are going to want to know about this.CB, as in CB radio? No, good buddy, this has nothing to do with the Citizens’ Band radio service used by truckers for two-way voice communications and that lives in the 27MHz band in the US. CBRS lives in the 3.5GHz band.To read this article in full, please click here

IBM upgrades its Big Iron OS for better cloud, security, and AI support

IBM continues to fine-tune its mainframe to keep it attractive to enterprise users interested in keeping the Big Iron in their cloud and AI-application development plans.The company released a new version of the mainframe operating system—z/OS V2.5—that includes beefed-up support for containers, AI, and security.Chip shortage will hit hardware buyers for months to years According to IBM, applications are at the heart of transactional and batch workloads running on z/OS. Fundamentally, developing new applications while modernizing existing applications is part of the digital transformation occurring in many enterprises.To read this article in full, please click here

IBM upgrades its Big Iron OS for better cloud, security, and AI support

Xilinx launches Versal HBM processors for the data center

Xilinx continues to be arguably the most productive chip maker in the Valley with the introduction of the Versal HBM adaptive compute acceleration platform (ACAP), the latest in its Versal processor portfolio.Xilinx is known as a FPGA company, but the Versal line is so much more than that. Versal is the mashup of many different processor technologies into one die. Of course it has the FPGA programmable logic gates, but it also has Arm cores for applications and real-time processing, intelligent engines (AI blocks, DSPs), and I/O (PCIe Gen 5, CXL). The family ranges from the high-end Premium edition to the Versal AI Edge processors.To read this article in full, please click here

Xilinx launches Versal HBM processors for the data center

Do you really need a service mesh?

The challenges involved in deploying and managing microservices have led to the creation of the service mesh, a tool for adding observability, security, and traffic management capabilities at the application layer. While a service mesh is intended to help developers and SREs with a number of use cases related to service-to-service communication within Kubernetes clusters, a service mesh also adds operational complexity and introduces an additional control plane for security teams to manage.

What is a service mesh?

A service mesh is a software infrastructure layer for controlling and monitoring internal, service-to-service traffic in microservices applications.

Service mesh provides some of the middleware and some of the components that enable service-to-service communication, such as dynamic discovery. It provides capabilities around service discovery, load balancing traffic across services, security features around encryption and authentication, tracing observability, and more. The service mesh architecture leverages design patterns to enable communication between services without requiring microservices to rewrite applications.

Service mesh architecture

One of the key aspects of how a service mesh works is that it leverages a sidecar design pattern. Services communicate and handle requests via a proxy, which is dynamically injected into each pod. Envoy is one of the most popular proxies Continue reading

With $3.1B Valuation, What’s Ahead for PsiQuantum?

It is clear computing is in for a revolution if a company can have unicorn status with its main product still a few years away. …

With $3.1B Valuation, What’s Ahead for PsiQuantum? was written by Nicole Hemsoth at The Next Platform.

Is SD-WAN out to kill MPLS?

There is arguably no networking technology surrounded by more hype than software defined WANs (SD-WAN), and much of it is well deserved. SD-WAN resources What is SD-WAN and what does it mean for networking, security, cloud? 10 SD-WAN features you’re probably not using but should be SD-WAN may be the key to smart network services SD-WAN and analytics: A marriage made for the new normal Native SD-WAN monitoring tools are not enough, survey says A significant number of network professionals either have an SD-WAN deployment underway or on their near-term roadmap. The reason is that SD-WAN architecture is optimized for cloud computing while legacy WANs were designed when client-server computing was the norm.To read this article in full, please click here

Upcoming Live Webinar: Data Center Fabrics

I’ll be teaching a three-hour live webinar on data center fabrics on the 20th of August—

Data centers are the foundation of the cloud, whether private, public, on the edge, or in the center of the network. This training will focus on topologies and control planes, including scale, performance, and centralization. This training is important for network designers and operators who want to understand the elements of data center design that apply across all hardware and software types.

Mitigating the Risks of Multi-Cloud Environments

New security challenges emerge as more organizations launch or expand their multi-cloud strategies as part of their digital transformation initiatives.

Getting Started With BGP Address Family Resource Modules

Modern enterprise networks have grown a lot in size and complexity, making them more difficult to manage than ever before. Working on these complex networks manually can be tedious, time-consuming, costly, and more prone to error.

Red Hat Ansible Network Automation resource modules provide a path for users to ease the network management, especially across multiple different product vendors. This enables users to manipulate configuration as structured data without worrying about network platform specific details.

In this blog post, we’ll explore the newly added BGP address family resource module using junipernetwork.junos.junos_bgp_address_family as an example. Similar blogs are also available, which cover resource modules for OSPFv2, ACLs, BGP Global and route maps.

Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) is a standardized exterior gateway protocol designed to exchange routing and reachability information between autonomous systems (AS) on the internet. The protocol is often classified as a path vector protocol, but is sometimes also classed as a distance-vector routing protocol. It is used in larger network setups, as Network World so aptly observes:

BGP has been called the glue of the Internet and the postal service of the internet. One comparison likens BGP to GPS applications on mobile phones.

Managing Continue reading

Helping build a green Internet

When we started Cloudflare, we weren't thinking about minimizing the environmental impact of the Internet. Frankly, I didn't really think of the Internet as having much of an environmental impact. It was just this magical resource that gave access to information and services from anywhere.

But that was before I started racking servers in hyper-cooled data centers. Before Cloudflare started paying the bills to keep those servers powered up and cooled down. Before we became obsessed with maximizing the number of requests we could process per watt of power. And long before we started buying directly from renewable power suppliers to drive down the cost of electricity across our network.

Today, I have a very good understanding of how much power it takes to run the Internet. It therefore wasn't surprising to read the Boston Consulting Group study which found that 2% of all carbon output, about 1 billion metric tons per year, is attributable to the Internet. That’s the equivalent of the entire aviation industry.

Cloudflare: Accidentally Environmentally Friendly By Design

While we didn't set out to reduce the environmental impact of the Internet, Cloudflare has always had efficiency at its core. It comes from our ongoing fight with Continue reading

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