Heavy Networking 573: Using Application Dictionaries For Better Security Policy Management

Today's Heavy Networking thinks hard about how to manage security policy in modern IT infrastructure. We get into sources of truth, application modeling and application dictionaries, approval workflows, and more--all in the context of automation. Our guests are Ken Celenza and Brett Lykins from Network To Code.

The post Heavy Networking 573: Using Application Dictionaries For Better Security Policy Management appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Round-up of Nvidia GTC data-center news

With a few dozen press releases and blog posts combined, no one can say that Nvidia’s GPU Technology Conference (GTC) is a low-key affair. Like last year’s show it is virtual, so many of the announcements are coming from CEO Jen-Hsun Huang’s kitchen.Here is a rundown of the most pertinent announcements data-center folks will care about.Two Ampere 100 offshoots Nvidia's flagship GPU is the Ampere A100, introduced last year. It is a powerful chip ideal for supercomputing, high-performance computing (HPC), and massive artificial intelligence (AI) projects, but it’s also overkill for some use cases and some wallets.So at GTC the company introduced two smaller scale little brothers for its flagship A100, the A30 for mainstream AI and analytics servers, and the A10 for mixed compute and graphics workloads. Both are downsized from the bigger, more powerful, and more energy-consuming A100.To read this article in full, please click here

Real Life Ensues

Hey everyone! You probably noticed that I didn’t post a blog last week. Which means for the first time in over ten years I didn’t post one. The streak is done. Why? Well, real life decided to take over for a bit. I was up to my eyeballs in helping put on our BSA council Wood Badge course. I had a great time and completely lost track of time while I was there. And that means I didn’t get a chance to post something. Which is a perfect excuse to discuss why I set goals the way that I do.

Consistency Is Key

I write a lot. Between my blog here and the writing I do for Gestalt IT I do at least 2-3 posts a week. That’s on top of any briefing notes I type out or tweets I send when I have the energy to try and be funny. For someone that felt they weren’t a prolific writer in the past I can honestly say I spend a lot of time writing out things now. Which means that I have to try and keep a consistent schedule of doing things or else I will get swamped by some other Continue reading

Introducing workers.new, custom builds, and improved logging for Workers

Introducing workers.new, custom builds, and improved logging for Workers
Introducing workers.new, custom builds, and improved logging for Workers

Cloudflare Workers® aims to be the easiest and most powerful platform for developers to build and deploy their applications. With Workers, you can quickly solve problems without having to wonder: “is this going to scale?”

You write the JavaScript and we handle the rest, from distribution to scaling and concurrency.

In the spirit of quickly solving problems, we’re excited to launch three new improvements to the Workers experience, so you can take your next idea and ship it even faster.

Introducing... workers.new

Introducing workers.new, custom builds, and improved logging for Workers

First, we’re introducing https://workers.new, a shortcut that takes you directly to a JavaScript editor for creating a new Worker. Anytime you have a cool idea, need a quick fix to a problem, or just want to debug some JavaScript, you now have a simple way to go from idea to prototype. What’s more is you don’t even need to deploy the Worker to try it out!

Introducing workers.new, custom builds, and improved logging for Workers

We’ve also updated the default Worker template to help you go a few steps beyond the typical “Hello, World!”. When you open the editor, you’ll now see a few examples that demonstrate how to redirect requests, modify headers, and parse responses.

Customize your build scripts

Introducing workers.new, custom builds, and improved logging for Workers

For developers Continue reading

Node.js support in Cloudflare Workers

Node.js support in Cloudflare Workers
Node.js support in Cloudflare Workers

We released Cloudflare Workers three years ago, making edge compute accessible to the masses with native support for the world’s most ubiquitous language — JavaScript.

The Workers platform has transformed so much since its launch. Developers can not only write sandboxed code at our edge, they can also store data at the edge with Workers KV and, more recently, coordinate state within our giant network using Durable Objects. Now, we’re excited to share our support of an 11 year old technology that’s still going strong: Node.js.

Node.js made a breakthrough by enabling developers to build both the frontend and the backend with a single language. It took JavaScript beyond the browser and into the server by using Chrome’s JavaScript engine, V8.

Workers is also built on V8 Isolates and empowers developers in a similar way by allowing you to create entire applications with only JavaScript — except your code runs across Cloudflare’s data centers in over 100 countries.

Our Package Support Today

There is nothing more satisfying than importing a library and watching your code magically work out-of-the-box.

For over 20k packages, Workers supports this magic already: any Node.js package that uses webpack or another polyfill Continue reading

Cloudflare Stream now supports NFTs

Cloudflare Stream now supports NFTs
Cloudflare Stream now supports NFTs

Cloudflare Stream has been helping creators publish their videos online without having to think about video quality, device compatibility, storage buckets or digging through FFmpeg documentation. These creators want to be able to claim ownership of their works and assert control over how that ownership claim is transferred. Increasingly, many of those creators are looking to Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs).

NFTs are a special type of smart contract that allows provable ownership of the contract on the blockchain. Some call NFTs collectibles because like coins or stamps, collectors who enjoy them buy, sell and trade them. Collectors keep track of NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain which acts as a shared source of truth of all the activity.

Today, we’re introducing a new API that takes a ERC-721 token ID and contact address and sets it on a video so every video on Stream can be represented with an NFT.

curl -X POST -H "Authorization: Bearer $AUTH_TOKEN" --data '{"contract":"0x57f1887a8bf19b14fc0d912b9b2acc9af147ea85","token":"5"}' https://api.cloudflare.com/client/v4/accounts/$ACCOUNT_ID/stream/$VIDEO_ID/nft

Once you set it, you cannot change these values so be sure to set it to an NFT you own! If you set a video you own to an NFT you don’t own, the owner of the NFT can claim Continue reading

Announcing Cloudflare’s Database Partners

Announcing Cloudflare’s Database Partners
Announcing Cloudflare’s Database Partners

Cloudflare Workers is the easiest way for developers to deploy their application’s code with performance, scale and security baked in. No configuration necessary. Worker code scales to serve billions of requests close to your users across Cloudflare’s 200+ data centers.

But that’s not the only interesting problem we need to solve. Every application has two parts: code and state.

State isn’t always the easiest to work in a massive distributed system. When an application runs in 200+ data centers simultaneously, there’s an inherent tradeoff between distributing the data for better performance, availability, scale, and guaranteeing that all data centers see the same data at a given point in time.

Our goal is to make state at the edge seamless. We started that journey with Workers KV, which provides low-latency access to globally distributed data. We’re since added Durable Objects, with strong consistency and the ability to design coordination patterns on top of Workers. We’re continuing to invest in and build out these products.

However, some use cases aren’t easily implemented with Workers KV or Durable Objects. Think querying complex datasets, or communicating with an existing system-of-record. Even if we built this functionality ourselves, there will always be customers who want Continue reading

The Hedge 79: Brooks Westbrook and the Data Driven Lens

Many networks are designed and operationally drive by the configuration and management of features supporting applications and use cases. For network engineering to catch up to the rest of the operational world, it needs to move rapidly towards data driven management based on a solid understanding of the underlying protocols and systems. Brooks Westbrook joins Tom Amman and Russ White to discuss the data driven lens in this episode of the Hedge.

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What Does Aruba Do With No SASE To Sell? It Changes The Conversation

SASE was clearly on the minds of Aruba executives during its Atmosphere 2021 event, but without an actual SASE offering in its portfolio, Aruba had to steer the conversation toward SD-WAN and Aruba's role as a partner that can help enterprises transform at their own pace.

The post What Does Aruba Do With No SASE To Sell? It Changes The Conversation appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Released: Docker Desktop for Mac [Apple Silicon]

Today we are excited to announce the general availability of Docker Desktop for Mac [Apple Silicon], continuing to support developers in our community with their choice of local development environments.  

First, we want to say a big thank you to our community. The excitement you have shown about being able to run Docker Desktop on the new M1 chip has been tremendous and hugely motivating to us. Your engagement on testing builds and reporting problems has been invaluable. As soon as Apple announced the new M1 chip, you let us know on our public roadmap that this was a high priority for you, and it quickly became by far our most upvoted roadmap item ever. You also responded very positively to our previous blog posts.

After the M1 machines were publicly available, those of you on our developer preview program tested some very early builds. And then as we moved into public tech previews and release candidates, many more of you joined in with testing your enormous variety of use cases, and reporting bugs. In total we have had 45,000 downloads of the various preview builds, and 140 tickets raised on our public bug tracker, not to Continue reading

Benefits Of Coworking Spaces

Coworking spaces have seen a rapid increase in recent years. In 2018, coworking spaces in the U.S increased by more than 16%. On the other hand, these spaces outside the U.S increased by 36%. So, what is the reason for this increase?

Are coworking spaces that effective? Let’s find out.

1. People Find Work More Meaningful In Coworking Spaces

We are all familiar with office politics. It exists in every business, and there is no way out of it. However, freelancers sharing coworking spaces don’t feel the need to put another persona when they work here.

That is because they are among people doing different kinds of work, and no one competes with each other. That is why it enhances the identity of one’s own work. Through this strong identity, people find more meaning as what they do seems more unique and interesting in such an environment.

2. Networking

Networking is perhaps one of the most important benefits of utilizing a coworking space. People connect with each other that they would not normally meet if it wasn’t for the space. These connections help in being part of a community.

However, if you are running a small business through Continue reading