The Week in Internet News: U.S. Stimulus Bill Pumps Up Broadband

Broadband to the people: A new COVID-19 stimulus bill passed by the U.S. Congress includes $7 billion to help residents connect to broadband and pay their monthly bills, the Washington Post reports. The legislation is one of the largest one-time investments in broadband ever in U.S. history. “Nearly half the money is slated to fund a new monthly benefit for low-income families, aiming to ensure that those who have lost their jobs can stay online at a time when the pandemic has forced millions of people to work, learn and communicate on their devices from home.”

RIP Flash: Adobe has finally killed off the controversial Flash video and animation tool that was a formative technology for the Internet, the Independent says. While Flash was widely used on websites for many years, critics complained about security problems and a poor user experience. In 2009, 99 percent of all PCs with an Internet connection had Flash installed, Adobe has said.

Alexa, what taxes do I owe? The Indian government is working on Alexa-like chatbots to deliver public services, India Today reports. The government has invited bids for a voice assistant similar to Amazon’s Alexa and Google Assistant. Using artificial Continue reading

IoT adds smarts to IT asset monitoring

The Internet of Things (IoT) is beginning to play a key role in monitoring and maintaining internal IT systems and environments. With many IT pros working from home because of the coronavirus pandemic, IT teams are leveraging networked sensors to gauge the performance and condition of servers, storage systems, network devices, and other technology components.IoT can help organizations not only evaluate how well equipment in data centers is performing and when systems need to be updated or repaired, but also monitor environmental conditions and events such as air temperature, humidity, and water leaks. IoT systems can also help organizations detect intrusions that could result in downtime or data breaches.To read this article in full, please click here

Reviving Old Content, Part 3

We had the usual gloomy December weather during the end-of-year holidays, and together with the partial lockdown (with confusing ever-changing rules only someone in Balkans could dream up) it managed to put me in OCD mood… and so I decided to remove broken links from the old blog posts.

While doing that I figured out how fragile our industry is – I encountered a graveyard of ideas and products that would make Google proud. Some of those blog posts were removed, I left others intact because they still have some technical merits, and I made sure to write sarcastic update notices on product-focused ones. Consider those comments Easter eggs… now go and find them ;))

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Reviving Old Content, Part 3

We had the usual gloomy December weather during the end-of-year holidays, and together with the partial lockdown (with confusing ever-changing rules only someone in Balkans could dream up) it managed to put me in OCD mood… and so I decided to remove broken links from the old blog posts.

While doing that I figured out how fragile our industry is – I encountered a graveyard of ideas and products that would make Google proud. Some of those blog posts were removed, I left others intact because they still have some technical merits, and I made sure to write sarcastic update notices on product-focused ones. Consider those comments Easter eggs… now go and find them ;))

Anyway, I also salvaged some of the old content I was stupid enough to publish somewhere else from archive.org. Here it is:

BGP in 2020 – BGP Update Churn

The first part of this report looked at the size of the routing table and looked at some projections of its growth for both IPv4 and IPv6. However, the scalability of BGP as the Internet’s routing protocol also is related to the rate of dynamic routing updates. If the update rate of BGP is growing faster than we can deploy processing capability to match, then the routing system will lose coherence, and at that point the network will head into periods of instability. This second part of the BGP report looks at the profile of BGP updates across 2020

Suzieq has a GUI

We haven’t blogged for three months. We’ve been busy working on Suzieq, adding features and figuring out where we want it to go. We haven’t blogged about Suzieq for even longer. Since we last blogged about Suzieq, we’ve added tons of new features and platforms. In no specific order, we’ve...

How I Installed Tasmota Firmware on a Treatlife Switch

For years now I've had a light switch that can be programmed to turn itself on/off on a schedule. The switch is programmed with the date, time, time zone, and lat/long and then you can create a schedule such as, "turn the lights on at sun set". It works pretty well except when 1/ daylight savings time starts or stops (the schedule doesn't adjust itself) or 2/ the power goes out (bye, bye all programming).

This slight annoyance coupled with my desire for a project I could geek out on lead me to look into software-controllable light switches.

In this post I'll explain how I flashed the open source Tasmota firmware onto the Treatlife 3-way wall switch which in the end allowed me to control the lights via a home automation controller.

BGP in 2020 – The BGP Table

At the start of each year I have been reporting on the behaviour of the inter-domain routing system over the past 12 months, looking in some detail at some metrics from the routing system that can show the essential shape and behaviour of the underlying interconnection fabric of the Internet.

Winning in 2021

I’d jump in here and say something about 2020 being a crazy year but we all know it’s nothing we haven’t heard before. I’d also say that we’re going to look back at my big plans for the year however we also know that those got scrapped right after the end of February. I like looking back at a couple of things and then looking forward to what the next year will accomplish. Why? Because retrospectives are boring and putting your planning out there for the world to see is a much more interesting use of your time. The journey you’re taking changes greatly when you change your thinking about the destination.

2020 Good or Bad

2020 wasn’t all bad. I finally justified getting a new office chair! All kidding aside, 2020 was a year that challenged everyone greatly when it came to mental health, professional output, and even personal capability. My biggest focus for 2020 was to start putting blog posts out earlier in the week and focus on continuous improvement. I’d say the first was another miss due to the hectic workload, as a lot of my posts still came out on Fridays.

The second point was a Continue reading

PCNSA 10

My number one certification goal for 2021 is the PCNSA 10 certification. I require it for my new role so I am getting stuck right in. In this post I will document the resources and links to my personal notes for the PCNSA 10 certification. I will update this document as I go up until...

2021 Goals

2020 was a bit of a write off. 2021 is the year that the empire of Brad strikes back. 2021 Goals Health and Fitness Family Certifications Books Automation Mansformation Health and Fitness This year I will continue the healthy lifestyle and I am setting myself some ambitous...
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