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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

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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:

1. Egress routers allocate MPLS labels per egress peer and advertise them
2. Ingress routers or

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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.

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Weekend Reads 100624

Thanks to the popularity and widespread success of ChatGPT, most IT users are familiar with the concept of a large language model (LLM). But how does an LLM apply to network operations?

If you don’t know what you’re operating on, or what the expected output range might be, then maybe you ought not to be operating on that data in the first place. But now these languages have gotten into the wild and we’ll never be able to hunt them down and kill them soon enough for my liking, or for the greater good.

We then analyze ten data sets spanning industry and academic sources, across four years (2019-2023), to find and explain discrepancies based on data sources, vantage points, methods, and parameters.

Phishing attacks, which trick users into sharing private data, have been a major security threat for years. According to a 2023 FBI report, it is the top digital crime type.

A test account that’s shared among many can be used by anyone who happens to have the password. This leaves a trail of poorly managed or unmanaged accounts that only increases your attack surface.

As radio host Mark Davis put it recently, “ultimately everything AI does is Continue reading

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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

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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.

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

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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

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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.

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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 »

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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 »

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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

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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:

• MD5 Passwords and GTSM
• Use BGP Timers and BFD to Speed Up BGP Convergence
• BGP Route Aggregation
• EBGP Sessions over IPv6 LLA Interfaces
• Establish an IBGP Session
• Build a Transit Network with IBGP
• Use BGP Route Reflectors
• Using No-Export Community to Filter Transit Routes

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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

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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 »

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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.

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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.

download

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Cerebras Needs Wall Street To Expand Beyond One Core Customer

Waferscale compute engine and AI system maker Cerebras Systems has filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission to sell a chunk of itself to the public, giving we outsiders a view of the past two and a half years of its internal financials. …

Cerebras Needs Wall Street To Expand Beyond One Core Customer was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

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D2DO252: (Re)Building Cloudflare’s Millions-of-Logs-Per-Second Logging Pipeline

Cloudflare’s transition from SysLog-NG to OpenTelemetry is the topic of discussion on this episode of Day Two DevOps. Guests Colin Douch and Jayson Cena from Cloudflare explain the reasons behind the migration, including the need for better scalability, memory safety, and maintainability. They delve into challenges such as ensuring uninterrupted customer traffic and optimizing performance.... Read more »

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Patent troll Sable pays up, dedicates all its patents to the public!

Back in February, we celebrated our victory at trial in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas against patent trolls Sable IP and Sable Networks. This was the culmination of nearly three years of litigation against Sable, but it wasn’t the end of the story. 

Today we’re pleased to announce that the litigation against Sable has finally concluded on terms that we believe send a strong message to patent trolls everywhere — if you bring meritless patent claims against Cloudflare, we will fight back and we will win.

We’re also pleased to announce additional prizes in Project Jengo, and to make a final call for submissions before we determine the winners of the Final Awards. As a reminder, Project Jengo is Cloudflare’s effort to fight back against patent trolls by flipping the incentive structure that has encouraged the growth of patent trolls who extract settlements out of companies using frivolous lawsuits. We do this by asking the public to help identify prior art that can invalidate any of the patents that a troll holds, not just the ones that are asserted against Cloudflare. We’ve already given out over $125,000 to individuals since the launch Continue reading

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How Cloudflare auto-mitigated world record 3.8 Tbps DDoS attack

Since early September, Cloudflare's DDoS protection systems have been combating a month-long campaign of hyper-volumetric L3/4 DDoS attacks. Cloudflare’s defenses mitigated over one hundred hyper-volumetric L3/4 DDoS attacks throughout the month, with many exceeding 2 billion packets per second (Bpps) and 3 terabits per second (Tbps). The largest attack peaked 3.8 Tbps — the largest ever disclosed publicly by any organization. Detection and mitigation was fully autonomous. The graphs below represent two separate attack events that targeted the same Cloudflare customer and were mitigated autonomously.

^{A mitigated 3.8 Terabits per second DDoS attack that lasted 65 seconds}

^{A mitigated 2.14 billion packet per second DDoS attack that lasted 60 seconds}

Cloudflare customers are protected

Cloudflare customers using Cloudflare’s HTTP reverse proxy services (e.g. Cloudflare WAF and Cloudflare CDN) are automatically protected.

Cloudflare customers using Spectrum and Magic Transit are also automatically protected. Magic Transit customers can further optimize their protection by deploying Magic Firewall rules to enforce a strict positive and negative security model at the packet layer.

Other Internet properties may not be safe

The scale and frequency of these attacks are unprecedented. Due to their sheer size and bits/packets per second rates, these Continue reading