Routing in Stretched VLAN Designs
One of my readers was “blessed” with the stretched VLANs requirement combined with the need for inter-VLAN routing and sub-par equipment from a vendor not exactly known for their data center switching products. Before going on, you might want to read his description of the challenge he’s facing and what I had to say about the idea of building stackable switches across multiple locations.
Here’s an overview diagram of what my reader was facing. The core switches in each location work as a single device (virtual chassis), and there’s MLAG between core and edge switches. The early 2000s just called and they were proud of the design (but to be honest, sometimes one has to work with the tools his boss bought, so…).
Routing in Stretched VLAN Designs
One of my readers was “blessed” with the stretched VLANs requirement combined with the need for inter-VLAN routing and sub-par equipment from a vendor not exactly known for their data center switching products. Before going on, you might want to read his description of the challenge he’s facing and what I had to say about the idea of building stackable switches across multiple locations.
Here’s an overview diagram of what my reader was facing. The core switches in each location work as a single device (virtual chassis), and there’s MLAG between core and edge switches. The early 2000s just called and they were proud of the design (but to be honest, sometimes one has to work with the tools his boss bought, so…).
Giving SmartNICs Bigger FPGA And CPU Brains
The lines between a server, a SmartNIC, and a Data Processing Unit, or DPU, are getting fuzzier, and the good news is that definitions do not matter nearly as much as use cases. …
Giving SmartNICs Bigger FPGA And CPU Brains was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.
Getting Started with Intent-Based Networking
Intent-based networking applies a deep level of intelligence to enterprise networks. Here's how your organization can benefit from this powerful emerging technology.Technologies that Didn’t: Directory Services
One of the most important features of the Network Operating Systems, like Banyan Vines and Novell Netware, available in the middle of the 1980’s was their integrated directory system. These directory systems allowed for the automatic discovery of many different kinds of devices attached to a network, such as printers, servers, and computers. Printers, of course, were the important item in this list, because printers have always been the bane of the network administrator’s existence. An example of one such system, an early version of Active Directory, is shown in the illustration below.
Users, devices and resources, such as file mounts, were stored in a tree. The root of the tree was (generally) the organization. There were Organizational Units (OUs) under this root. Users and devices could belong to an OU, and be given access to devices and services in other OUs through a fairly simple drag and drop, or GUI based checkbox style interface. These systems were highly developed, making it fairly easy to find any sort of resource, including email addresses of other uses in the organization, services such as shared filers, and—yes—even printers.
The original system of this kind was Banyan’s Streetalk, which did not have the Continue reading
Compiling Qt with Docker Using Caching
This is a guest post from Viktor Petersson, CEO of Screenly.io. Screenly is the most popular digital signage product for the Raspberry Pi. Find Viktor on Twitter @vpetersson.
In the previous blog post, we talked about how we compile Qt for Screenly OSE using Docker’s nifty multi-stage and multi-platform features. In this article, we build on this topic further and zoom in on caching.
Docker does a great job with caching using layers. Each command (e.g., RUN, ADD, etc.) generates a layer, which Docker then reuses in future builds unless something changes. As always, there are exceptions to this process, but this is generally speaking true. Another type of caching is caching for a particular operation, such as compiling source code, inside a container.
At Screenly, we created a Qt build environment inside a Docker container. We created this Qt build to ensure that the build process was reproducible and easy to share among developers. Since the Qt compilation process takes a long time, we leveraged ccache to speed up our Qt compilation. Implementing ccache requires volume mounting a folder from outside of the Docker environment.
The above steps work well if you Continue reading
Know an Innovator Who’s Made Groundbreaking Contributions to the Internet? Nominate Them to the Internet Hall of Fame
Adiel Akplogan expanded Internet access across Africa. Jean Armour Polly redefined the role of the librarian as a digital educator and Internet advocate. Suguru Yamaguchi led cybersecurity research and helped found organizations to make the Internet more secure.
All three have been recognized with many others by the Internet Hall of Fame for their groundbreaking contributions to the Internet. Their extraordinary work has made the Internet, its global availability and use, and its transformative nature possible.
Do you know of an exceptional individual who has done the same? Perhaps a pioneer who expanded the Internet. A trailblazer who made a major technical innovation to make the Internet faster or better. Or a passionate advocate who made the Internet more inclusive and accessible.
If you answered yes, nominate them to the Internet Hall of Fame!
Nominations for the 2021 class of inductees open today – the deadline is April 23, 2021. Individuals worldwide who have played an extraordinary role in the conceptualization, building, and development of the Internet globally will be considered for induction.
This global pandemic has shown us how critical the Internet is. It is our lifeline, where we communicate, create, connect, and collaborate – and we cannot imagine Continue reading
Virtual Networks and Subnets in AWS, Azure, and GCP
Now that we know what regions and availability zones are, let’s go back to Daniel Dib’s question:
As I understand it, subnets in Azure span availability zones. Do you see any drawback to this? Does subnet matter if your VMs are in different AZs?
Wait, what? A subnet is stretched across multiple failure domains? Didn’t Ivan claim that’s ridiculous?
TL&DR: What I claimed was that a single layer-2 network is a single failure domain. Things are a bit more complex in public clouds. Keep reading and you’ll find out why.
Virtual Networks and Subnets in AWS, Azure, and GCP
Now that we know what regions and availability zones are, let’s go back to Daniel Dib’s question:
As I understand it, subnets in Azure span availability zones. Do you see any drawback to this? Does subnet matter if your VMs are in different AZs?
Wait, what? A subnet is stretched across multiple failure domains? Didn’t Ivan claim that’s ridiculous?
TL&DR: What I claimed was that a single layer-2 network is a single failure domain. Things are a bit more complex in public clouds. Keep reading and you’ll find out why.
Automate Leaf and Spine Deployment – Part4
The 4th post in the ‘Automate Leaf and Spine Deployment’ series goes through the creation of the base and fabric config snippets and their deployment to devices. Loopbacks, NVE and intra-fabric interfaces are configured and both the underlay and overlay routing protocol peerings formed leaving the fabric in a state ready for services to be added.
The Best and the Brightest Security and Privacy Experts Are Gathering Virtually at NDSS 2021
The 28th consecutive Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS 2021) kicks off today. NDSS is a premier academic research conference addressing a wide range of topics on network and system security. It’s an incubator for new, innovative ideas and research on the security and privacy of the Internet.
NDSS 2021, which takes place 21-25 February, will be one of the biggest NDSS symposia yet, featuring two keynotes, 90 peer-reviewed academic papers, six co-located workshops, and 19 posters focusing on vital and timely topics. All of this will happen virtually for the first time!
Here are some of the highlights.
Workshops
This year’s program officially started yesterday with three workshops on Sunday, 21 February. NDSS workshops are organized around a single topic and provide an opportunity for greater dialogue between researchers and practitioners in the area.
The Binary Analysis Research (BAR) Workshop returns for its fourth year at NDSS. Binary analysis refers to the process where humans and automated systems examine underlying code in software to discover, exploit, and defend against vulnerabilities. With the enormous and ever-increasing amount of software in the world today, formalized and automated methods of analysis are vital to improving security. This workshop will emphasize the Continue reading
Arista Networks Brings The Battle For Routing To Cisco
It’s a great thing when an upstart supplier of hardware or software lands one of the hyperscalers or large public cloud builders on Earth as a customer. …
Arista Networks Brings The Battle For Routing To Cisco was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.