Project Jengo Redux: Cloudflare’s Prior Art Search Bounty Returns

Project Jengo Redux: Cloudflare’s Prior Art Search Bounty Returns
Project Jengo Redux: Cloudflare’s Prior Art Search Bounty Returns

Here we go again.

On March 15, Cloudflare was sued by a patent troll called Sable Networks — a company that doesn’t appear to have operated a real business in nearly ten years — relying on patents that don’t come close to the nature of our business or the services we provide. This is the second time we’ve faced a patent troll lawsuit.

As readers of the blog (or followers of tech press such as ZDNet and TechCrunch) will remember, back in 2017 Cloudflare responded aggressively to our first encounter with a patent troll, Blackbird Technologies, making clear we wouldn’t simply go along and agree to a nuisance settlement as part of what we considered an unfair, unjust, and inefficient system that throttled innovation and threatened emerging companies. If you don’t want to read all of our previous blog posts on the issue, you can watch the scathing criticisms of patent trolling provided by John Oliver or the writers of Silicon Valley.

We committed to fighting back against patent trolls in a way that would turn the normal incentive structure on its head. In addition to defending the case aggressively in the courts, we also founded Project Jengo — Continue reading

5G research by DARPA will lead to commercial applications

The U.S. military is devoting time and resources into research on improving the signal quality and security of 5G--efforts that, if history is any indication, eventually will result in technologies that are available to commercial enterprises. 5G resources What is 5G? Fast wireless technology for enterprises and phones How 5G frequency affects range and speed Private 5G can solve some problems that Wi-Fi can’t Private 5G keeps Whirlpool driverless vehicles rolling 5G can make for cost-effective private backhaul CBRS can bring private 5G to enterprises As Breaking Defense reports, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has awarded roughly $500,000 in “exploratory” funding to wireless startup MixComm to demonstrate whether silicon-based millimeter wave (mmWave) power amplifiers can economically boost radio signals so the Department of Defense (DoD) can leverage 5G wireless connectivity globally.To read this article in full, please click here

Everything Is a Graph

One of the viewers of Rachel Traylor’s excellent ‌Graph Algorithms in Networks webinar sent me this feedback:

I think it is too advanced for my needs. Interesting but difficult to apply. I love math and I find it interesting maybe for bigger companies, but for a small company it is not possible to apply it.

While a small company’s network might not warrant a graph-focused approach (I might disagree, but let’s not go there), keep in mind that almost everything we do in IT rides on top of some sort of graph:

Read more …

Everything Is a Graph

One of the viewers of Rachel Traylor’s excellent ‌Graph Algorithms in Networks webinar sent me this feedback:

I think it is too advanced for my needs. Interesting but difficult to apply. I love math and I find it interesting maybe for bigger companies, but for a small company it is not possible to apply it.

While a small company’s network might not warrant a graph-focused approach (I might disagree, but let’s not go there), keep in mind that almost everything we do in IT rides on top of some sort of graph:

Read more …

Microsoft’s Nuance deal might trigger a new IT spending wave

OK, help me understand this. Microsoft just spent almost $20 billion to buy Nuance, the company that supplies the popular Dragon speech-to-text tool. Microsoft already has speech-to-text available in Windows 10 and through Azure, and even a partnership with Nuance. Nuance’s single big jump in stock price in its history coincides with Covid and WFH, which is now (hopefully) passing. Nuance revenue boom? Apparently, ending. The Dragon product? Incremental to Microsoft’s current position. Health care vertical? Interesting, but not a cash cow.To read this article in full, please click here

SD-WAN Part V: Hub and Spoke with Restrected Spoke Sites

 

 

Introduction

 

Cisco Viptela SD-WAN solution builds a full-mesh topology between vEdge devices by default when there are no Control Policies implemented. This means that vEdges tries to build an IPSec/GRE tunnel to every reachable TLOC public IP addresses no matter which site or color (transport network) TLOCs belong to. We have already change the default behavior by using the restrictoption (chapter 2) under tunnel interfaces. In this way, tunnels are only established between TLOCs belonging to the same color. In this chapter, we are going to create a Hub and Spoke topology by implementing a Control Policy where the vSmart advertises TLOC/OMP routes from site 30 to sites 10 and 20 and TLOC/OMP routes from sites 10 and 20 to site 30. vSmart doesn’t advertise TLOC/OMP routes between sites 10 and 20. Site 10 and 20 will be our Branch/Remote sites and site 30 will be the Hub/DataCenter site.

 

Figure 5-1 recaps the operation of the Overlay Management Protocol (OMP). vEdge1 in site 10 advertises TLOC route advertisement to vSmart where it describes its System Id, transport color, and encapsulation method as well as Public/Private IP and restricts attributes (among several other attributes). vSmart forwards TLOC routes received from vEdge1 to both vEdge2 (site 20) and vEdge3 (site 30). vEdge1 also advertises OMP routes where it describes the reachability information about its local subnet 172.16.10.0/24 bound to VPN10.

Figure 5-1: TLOC Route advertisement.

 

Continue reading

Worth Reading: Understand Your Single Points of Failure

I’ve been saying the same thing for years, but never as succinctly as Alastair Cooke did in his Understand Your Single Points of Failure (SPOF) blog post:

The problem is that each time we eliminated a SPOF, we at least doubled our cost and complexity. The additional cost and complexity are precisely why we may choose to leave a SPOF; eliminating the SPOF may be more expensive than an outage cost due to the SPOF.

Obviously that assumes that you’re able to follow business objectives and not some artificial measure like uptime. Speaking of artificial measures, you might like the discussion about taxonomy of indecision.

Worth Reading: Understand Your Single Points of Failure

I’ve been saying the same thing for years, but never as succinctly as Alastair Cooke did in his Understand Your Single Points of Failure (SPOF) blog post:

The problem is that each time we eliminated a SPOF, we at least doubled our cost and complexity. The additional cost and complexity are precisely why we may choose to leave a SPOF; eliminating the SPOF may be more expensive than an outage cost due to the SPOF.

Obviously that assumes that you’re able to follow business objectives and not some artificial measure like uptime. Speaking of artificial measures, you might like the discussion about taxonomy of indecision.

Controversial Reads 042321


The Court ruled that Google did not violate copyright law when it included parts of Oracle’s Java programming code in its Android operating system—ending a decade-long multibillion dollar legal battle.


Today, however, choice is fast becoming an empty mantra as consumers face the iron law of compatibility. Forced to “opt in,” users submit to a relentless schedule of upgrades and updates among the ever-proliferating gadgets and technologies that bring us so much while governing our lives more and more.


I like my colleagues, but I’ve never met them in person. I found my own doctor; I cook my own food. My manager is 26 — too young for me to expect any parental warmth from him. When people ask me how I feel about my new position, I shrug: It’s a job.


Another day, another horrific Facebook privacy scandal. We know what comes next: Facebook will argue that losing a lot of our data means bad third-party actors are the real problem that we should trust Facebook to make more decisions about our data to protect against them.


Cookies are dying, and the tracking industry is scrambling to replace them. Google has proposed Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC), TURTLEDOVE, and Continue reading

Weekend Reads 042321


The average software application depends on more than 500 open source libraries and components, up 77% from 298 dependencies in two years, highlighting the difficulty of tracking the vulnerabilities in every software component, according to a new report from software management firm Synopsys.


Ambient computing is a broad term that describes an environment of smart devices, data, A.I. decisions, and human activity that enables computer actions alongside everyday life, without the need for direct human commands or intervention.


The emergence of new protocols such as DNS-over HTTPS (DoH) has resulted in some browsers changing security critical behaviour without explaining the implications to users.


In early March 2021, a hacker group publicly exposed the username and password of an administrative account of a security camera vendor. The credentials enabled them to access 150,000 commercial security systems and, potentially, set up subsequent attacks on other critical equipment.


Security automation for posture assessment has been difficult to achieve even though many standards-based and proprietary solutions have been developed. The primary problem is the complexity of solutions requiring customisation by each enterprise.


In this study, we investigate DoT using 3.2k RIPE Atlas home probes deployed across more than 125 countries in July Continue reading

Worth Reading: The Insider’s Guide To Evangelizing Good Design

Scott Berkun wrote another great article that’s equally applicable to the traditional notion of design (his specialty) and the network design. Read it, replace design with network design, and use its lessons. Here’s just a sample:

  • Convincing people is a social process
  • Aim for small wins, not conversions of belief systems
  • Allies matter more than ideas
  • Design maturity grows one step at a time.

Worth Reading: The Insider’s Guide To Evangelizing Good Design

Scott Berkun wrote another great article that’s equally applicable to the traditional notion of design (his specialty) and the network design. Read it, replace design with network design, and use its lessons. Here’s just a sample:

  • Convincing people is a social process
  • Aim for small wins, not conversions of belief systems
  • Allies matter more than ideas
  • Design maturity grows one step at a time.

Organizations need to patch Pulse Secure VPNs

Organizations using Pulse Secure’s mobile VPN should patch vulnerabilities reportedly being exploited in the wild, possibly by a “Chinese espionage actor”.The patch–available here–is considered important enough that the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) gave federal agencies a deadline of April 23 to apply them.Backup lessons from a cloud-storage disaster CISA’s guidance states that federal users of Pulse Connect Secure VPNs must use the company’s free utility to ascertain whether their devices are vulnerable.To read this article in full, please click here

Organizations need to patch Pulse Secure VPNs

Organizations using Pulse Secure’s mobile VPN should patch vulnerabilities reportedly being exploited in the wild, possibly by a “Chinese espionage actor”.The patch–available here–is considered important enough that the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) gave federal agencies a deadline of April 23 to apply them.Backup lessons from a cloud-storage disaster CISA’s guidance states that federal users of Pulse Connect Secure VPNs must use the company’s free utility to ascertain whether their devices are vulnerable.To read this article in full, please click here

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