It is Easier to Move a Problem than Solve it (RFC1925, Rule 6)

Early on in my career as a network engineer, I learned the value of sharing. When I could not figure out why a particular application was not working correctly, it was always useful to blame the application. Conversely, the application owner was often quite willing to share their problems with me, as well, by blaming the network.

A more cynical way of putting this kind of sharing is the way RFC 1925, rule 6 puts is: “It is easier to move a problem around than it is to solve it.”

Of course, the general principle applies far beyond sharing problems with your co-workers. There are many applications in network and protocol design, as well. Perhaps the most widespread case deployed in networks today is the movement to “let the controller solve the problem.” Distributed routing protocols are hard? That’s okay, just implement routing entirely on a controller. Understanding how to deploy individual technologies to solve real-world problems is hard? Simple—move the problem to the controller. All that’s needed is to tell the controller what we intend to do, and the controller can figure the rest out. If you have problems solving any problem, just call it Software Defined Continue reading

Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV) Automation

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform acts as the single pane of glass to automate different manual tasks in a heterogeneous cloud and virtualization environments; be it Red Hat OpenStack Platform, VMware vSphere, bare metal or the next-generation Telco cloud-native platform.

To manage cloud infrastructures like Red Hat OpenStack Platform, we will need to manage not just the individual cloud services (configuration), but also the interactions and relationships between them (orchestration).  Ansible Content Collections for Red Hat OpenStack Platform allows automation and management of various OpenStack offerings powered by different prominent Telco network vendors - such as Ericsson, Huawei and Nokia.

Bringing the values and benefits of Ansible automation to Telco NFV operations and deployments daily jobs helps avoid a lot of manual tasks, saves time, improves consistency and frees the existing resources to do more non-repetitive tasks to focus on innovation.  

The following is an example of an Asia Pacific Telco using Ansible to implement NFV automation.



Background

The Telco customer has multiple Red Hat OpenStack Platform clouds from different vendors, i.e. Ericsson, Huawei, Nokia, VMware, and would like to have an automation tool that acts as a single pane of glass to fill some gaps in Continue reading

Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV) Automation

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform acts as the single pane of glass to automate different manual tasks in a heterogeneous cloud and virtualization environments; be it Red Hat OpenStack Platform, VMware vSphere, bare metal or the next-generation Telco cloud-native platform.

To manage cloud infrastructures like Red Hat OpenStack Platform, we will need to manage not just the individual cloud services (configuration), but also the interactions and relationships between them (orchestration).  Ansible Content Collections for Red Hat OpenStack Platform allows automation and management of various OpenStack offerings powered by different prominent Telco network vendors - such as Ericsson, Huawei and Nokia.

Bringing the values and benefits of Ansible automation to Telco NFV operations and deployments daily jobs helps avoid a lot of manual tasks, saves time, improves consistency and frees the existing resources to do more non-repetitive tasks to focus on innovation.  

The following is an example of an Asia Pacific Telco using Ansible to implement NFV automation.



Background

The Telco customer has multiple Red Hat OpenStack Platform clouds from different vendors, i.e. Ericsson, Huawei, Nokia, VMware, and would like to have an automation tool that acts as a single pane of glass to fill some gaps in Continue reading

The State Of Networking With Ivan Pepelnjak

In this episode, we sit down with Ivan Pepelnjak and talk about the state of networking.  We briefly talk about cloud-networking and move onto network automation discussing the pros & cons of the various solutions and frameworks in the market highlighting the importance of extensibility.  Finally, we talk about Ivan’s new open source project targeted to simplify the process of standing up a new virtual lab environment.

Relevant Links

Ivan Pepelnjak
Guest
Jason Edelman
Host

Outro Music:
Danger Storm Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

The post The State Of Networking With Ivan Pepelnjak appeared first on Network Collective.

Why Open Source Project Maintainers are Reluctant to use Digital Signatures, Two-Factor Authentication

We all agree that open source development methods help create better code. The Cathedral and the Bazaar,” which explained how the methodology of openness worked in Fetchmail project. But, that’s a general rule. Open source can still be abused by unscrupulous developers. So, why don’t we make sure when a programmer attempts to merge code into a program that they’re really who they say they are, by using two-factor authentication (2FA) or a digital signature? Good question. You might not think this is a real problem. Alas, it is. For example, in 2019 CursedGrabber malware was successfully Linux Foundation’s 2020 FOSS Contributor Survey, when developers were asked if the open source projects Continue reading

2020 U.S. Election: Cybersecurity Analysis

2020 U.S. Election: Cybersecurity Analysis

As the election season has ramped down and the new Presidential Administration begins, we think it’s important to assess whether there are lessons we can draw from our experience helping to provide cybersecurity services for those involved in the 2020 U.S. elections.

Cloudflare built the Athenian Project - our project to provide free services to state and local election websites - around the idea that access to the authoritative voting information offered by state and local governments is key to a functioning democracy and that Cloudflare could play an important role in ensuring that election-related websites are protected from cyberattacks intended to disrupt that access. Although the most significant challenges in this election cycle fell outside the realm of cybersecurity, the 2020 election certainly validated the importance of having access to definitive sources of authoritative election information.

We were pleased that the robust cybersecurity preparations we saw for the 2020 U.S. election appeared to be successful. From the Cloudflare perspective, we had the opportunity to witness firsthand the benefits of having access to free cybersecurity services provided to organizations that promote accurate voting information and election results, state and local governments conducting elections, and federal U.S candidates Continue reading

Random identity generation in Linux

If you need to generate a list of names and addresses to test an application or a script that you're working on, Linux can make that surprisingly easy. There's a command called "rig" that will create name, address and phone number listings. As far as I can tell, out of the box, it only works with U.S. addresses and area codes. However, if this is indeed the case, you might be able to work around this problem.To use the rig command, you can just type "rig" on the command line, and a single name and address will be generated. You will see something like this:$ rig Mavis English 1015 Tulip St Anderson, IN  46018 (317) xxx-xxxx To generate a list with many addresses, use the -c option and specify the number of addresses that you want to see.To read this article in full, please click here

Random identity generation in Linux

If you need to generate a list of names and addresses to test an application or a script that you're working on, Linux can make that surprisingly easy. There's a command called "rig" that will create name, address and phone number listings. As far as I can tell, out of the box, it only works with U.S. addresses and area codes. However, if this is indeed the case, you might be able to work around this problem.To use the rig command, you can just type "rig" on the command line, and a single name and address will be generated. You will see something like this:$ rig Mavis English 1015 Tulip St Anderson, IN  46018 (317) xxx-xxxx To generate a list with many addresses, use the -c option and specify the number of addresses that you want to see.To read this article in full, please click here

Demonstrate Small Automation Wins

Long long time ago in a country far far away when traveling was still a thing I led an interesting data center fabric design workshop. We covered tons of interesting topics, including automating network services deployments (starting with VLAN self-service for server admins).

As was often the case in my workshops, we had representatives from multiple IT teams sitting in the room, and when I started explaining how I’d automate VLAN deployments, the server administrator participating in the workshop quickly chimed in: “that’s exactly how I implemented self-service for some of our customers, it makes perfect sense to use the same approach for server port and VLAN provisioning”, and everyone else in the room agreed… apart from the networking engineer, who used a counter-argument along the lines of “we only provision a new VLAN or server port every few days, we can do it by hand” and no amount of persuasion would move him.

Read more …

Demonstrate Small Automation Wins

Long long time ago in a country far far away when traveling was still a thing I led an interesting data center fabric design workshop. We covered tons of interesting topics, including automating network services deployments (starting with VLAN self-service for server admins).

As was often the case in my workshops, we had representatives from multiple IT teams sitting in the room, and when I started explaining how I’d automate VLAN deployments, the server administrator participating in the workshop quickly chimed in: “that’s exactly how I implemented self-service for some of our customers, it makes perfect sense to use the same approach for server port and VLAN provisioning”, and everyone else in the room agreed… apart from the networking engineer, who used a counter-argument along the lines of “we only provision a new VLAN or server port every few days, we can do it by hand” and no amount of persuasion would move him.

Read more …

Don’t Make Parents Raise Kids in a World without Encryption

Natalie Campbell, Director of Public Advocacy at the Internet Society and a mother of two, warns against banning or weakening of encryption for the safety of children online. 

Governments and law enforcement agencies are trying to ban or weaken a critical tool for keeping our children safe online. As parents, we must speak up for our kids.

Children who are fortunate enough to have Internet access are online more than ever, and many are increasingly doing learning online. But these spaces are attractive targets for criminals, and parents and schools often lack resources to guide kids on how to stay safe as they learn, socialize, and discover the world online.

Luckily, encryption has our back. Whether it’s sending a confidential message to a friend, videoconferencing with grandparents, or submitting an assignment to a teacher, platforms and services that use end-to-end encryption can help keep our children safe by keeping the line of communication private between the sender and receiver.

Despite this, some governments, law enforcement agencies, and even some child protection agencies are trying take away the strongest digital tool we have as parents to keep children safe online. The United Kingdom, Germany, the European Commission, and the Continue reading

Report: IT employment improves in January

More than 18,000 new IT jobs sprang up in January as the overall outlook for tech hiring substantially improved over the past several months, according to figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and research firm Janco Associates.Between that new hiring and adjustments made to the job market totals in the latest BLS numbers, the IT sector has now recouped 53,600 of the roughly 100,000 jobs it lost due to the COVID-19 crisis, according to Janco principal M. Victor Janulaitis.[Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters.] What’s more, the upward trajectory seems likely to continue, as the changing IT jobs market grows and changes, according to his projections. “IT job-market growth will expand by almost 11% in the post-COVID era,” he said. “Most of the growth in the IT job market will be with software developers, quality assurance, and testers. This will be driven by [work from home] as it is embraced by more enterprises in normal operations and internet-centric applications are developed and deployed.”To read this article in full, please click here

Network slicing: Wireless virtualization to build 5G services and conserve spectrum

Network slicing technology has large parts of the wireless networking community excited, and it’s easy to understand why: It can deliver multiple logical networks over a single physical infrastructure and give each network the unique set of characteristics required to meet specific user needs.The idea of re-using scarce radio-frequency spectrum to create more value for providers that own the infrastructure, in addition to the ability to offer over-the-top services beyond mere connectivity, has the telecom giants interested, particularly those deploying 5G cellular services.To read this article in full, please click here

Tech Bytes: Get Your Arms Around Network Changes With Infoblox’s NetMRI (Sponsored)

NetMRI from Infoblox is a network management tool with a variety of capabilities including device discovery and network topology mapping, configuration monitoring, change management, and more. We dive into what this tool can do with guests Ingmar Van Glabbeek, Senior Product Manager at Infoblox; and Adam Fox, Solution Architect at Empowered Networks. Infoblox is our sponsor for this Tech Bytes podcast.

Tech Bytes: Get Your Arms Around Network Changes With Infoblox’s NetMRI (Sponsored)

NetMRI from Infoblox is a network management tool with a variety of capabilities including device discovery and network topology mapping, configuration monitoring, change management, and more. We dive into what this tool can do with guests Ingmar Van Glabbeek, Senior Product Manager at Infoblox; and Adam Fox, Solution Architect at Empowered Networks. Infoblox is our sponsor for this Tech Bytes podcast.

The post Tech Bytes: Get Your Arms Around Network Changes With Infoblox’s NetMRI (Sponsored) appeared first on Packet Pushers.

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