Tier 1 Carriers Performance Report: August, 2020
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This Week in Internet News: India Bans 118 Apps From Chinese Companies
Eyes on you: A U.S. appeals court has ruled that a National Security Agency program that collected call data from millions of U.S. residents was illegal, The Hill reports. The call metadata collection program, exposed by Edward Snowden, was suspended in 2015. The court ruled that the bulk collection of phone records violated laws requiring agencies to seek court orders when collecting investigation-related information from private businesses.
Ban hammer strikes again: The Indian government has banned 118 apps from Chinese companies, including the popular PUBG Mobile shooter game, Indian Express says. The Indian IT ministry says the blocked apps are potential security threats. “In view of the emergent nature of threats [the ministry] has decided to block 118 mobile apps since in view of the information available they are engaged in activities which is prejudicial to sovereignty and integrity of India, defense of India, security of the state and public order,” the ministry said.
Privacy delayed: Apple has delayed a release of anti-tracking software in an iPhone operating system update after app developers raised concerns that the tool would destroy their ability to deliver targeted advertising, the Los Angeles Times reports. The new tool would have automatically blocked Continue reading
Networking, Engineering and Safety
You might remember my occasional rants about lack of engineering in networking. A long while ago David Barroso nicely summarized the situation in a tweet responding to my BGP and Car Safety blog post:
If we were in a proper engineering we’d be discussing how to regulate and add safeties to an important tech that is unsafe and hard to operate. Instead, we blog about how to do crazy shit to it or how it’s a hot mess. Let’s be honest, if BGP was a car it’d be one pulled by horses.
A Tale of Five Python SSH Libraries
In Suzieq, we needed to select a python library to fetch data from network devices (and servers) via SSH. This led us to a search for and evaluation of five SSH libraries, which I thought were the most suitable for the task at hand. Requirements We had a fairly simple...Weekend Reads 090420
Running a bit late this week … 
That said, Intel over the past couple of years has expanded its Continue reading
VXLAN Fabric with BGP EVPN Control-Plane: Design Considerations – Book Description and ToC
About this book
The intent of this book is to explain various design models for Overlay Network and Underlay Network used in VXLAN Fabric with BGP EVPN Control-Plane. The first two chapters are focusing on the Underlay Network solution. The OSPF is introduced first. Among other things, the book explains how OSPF flooding can be minimized with area design. After OSPF there is a chapter about BGP in the Underlay network. Both OSPF and BGP are covered deeply and things like convergence are discussed. After the Underlay Network part, the book focuses on BGP design. It explains the following models: (a) BGP Multi-AS with OSPF Underlay, this chapter discusses two design models – Shared Spine ASN and Unique Spien ASN, (b) BGP-Only Multi-ASN where both direct and loopback overlay BGP peering models are explained, (c) Single-ASN with OSPF Underlay, (d) Hybrid-ASN with OSPF Underlay – Pod-specific shared ASN connected via Super-Spine layer using eBGP peering, (e) Dual-ASN model where leafs share the same ASN, and spines share their ASN. Each of the design model chapters includes a “Complexity Map” that should help readers to understand the complexity of each solution. This book also explains BGP ECMP and related to Continue reading
MUST READ: Lessons from load balancers and multicast
Justin Pietsch published another must-read article, this time dealing with operational complexity of load balancers and IP multicast. Here are just a few choice quotes to get you started:
- A critical lesson I learned is that running out of capacity is the worst thing you can do in networking
- You can prevent a lot of problems if you can deep dive into an architecture and understand it’s tradeoffs and limitations
- Magic infrastructure is often extremely hard to troubleshoot and debug
You might find what he learned useful the next time you’re facing a unicorn-colored slide deck from your favorite software-defined or intent-based vendor ;))
Fast Friday- Labor Day Eve Edition
It’s a long weekend in the US thanks to Labor Day. Which is basically signaling the end of the summer months. Or maybe the end of March depending on how you look at it. The rest of the year is packed full of more virtual Zoom calls, conferences, Tech Field Day events, and all the fun you can have looking at virtual leaves turning colors.
It’s been an interesting news week for some things. And if you take out all the speculation about who is going to end up watching TikTok you are left with not much else. So I’ve been wondering out loud about a few things that I thought I would share.
- You need a backup video conferencing platform. If Zoom isn’t crashing on you then someone is deleting WebEx VMs. Or maybe your callers can’t get the hang of the interface. Treat it like a failing demo during a presentation: if it doesn’t work in five minutes, go to plan B. Don’t leave your people waiting for something that may not happen.
- If you work in the backbone service provider market, you need to do two things next week. First, you need to make sure all your Continue reading
Evolution of Excel 4.0 (XL4) Macro Weaponization Presentation
What is Virus Bulletin?
Virus Bulletin (often abbreviated as “VB”) is a magazine devoted to the discussion of malware and spam and has been around over 30 years. It is the forum in which security researchers and professionals discuss and share new directions in both the development of and protection against malware and spam. VB’s annual conference is almost as old as the magazine and has traditionally takes place in late September or early October each year.
Why Attend VB2020?
As always, this year’s VB conference covers a broad spectrum of topics by some of the most talented security researchers in the world. Included in the agenda is a paper published by three members of our VMware Threat Analysis Unit discussing how the weaponization of XL4 macros in Excel has evolved.
Excel 4.0 (XL4) macros have become increasingly popular for attackers, as many security vendors struggle to play catchup and detect them properly. This technique provides attackers with a simple and reliable method to get a foothold on a target network, as it simply represents an abuse of a legitimate 30-year-old feature of Excel and does not rely on any vulnerability or exploit to be successful.
Register to attend Continue reading
Video: Define the Problem Before Searching for a Solution
In December 2019 I finally turned my focus on business challenges first presentation into a short webinar session (part of Business Aspects of Networking Technologies webinar) starting with defining the problem before searching for a solution including three simple questions:
- What BUSINESS problem are you trying to solve?
- Are there good-enough alternatives or should you really invest into new technology and/or equipment?
- Is the problem worth solving?
You need Free ipSpace.net Subscription to watch the video.
The Memory Area Network At The Heart Of IBM’s Power10
It must have been something in the cosmic ether.
Apopros of nothing except the need to fill a blank page with something interesting back when we were analyzing IBM’s second quarter financials and considering the options that Big Blue has with the “Cirrus” Power10 systems it will be launching about a year from now, we did a thought experiment about what it would mean if IBM started to believe in big iron machines again. …
The Memory Area Network At The Heart Of IBM’s Power10 was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.
The New Model for Network Security: Zero Trust
The old security model, which followed the “trust but verify” method, is broken. That model granted excessive implicit trust that attackers abused, putting the organization at risk from malicious internal actors and allowing unauthorized outsiders wide-reaching access once inside. The new model, Zero Trust networking, presents an approach where the default posture is to deny access. Access is granted based on the identity of workloads, plus other attributes and context (like time/date, source, destination), and the appropriate trust required is offered at the time.
Calico Enterprise Zero Trust Network Security is one of the most effective ways for organizations to control access to their Kubernetes networks, applications, and data. It combines a wide range of preventative techniques including identity verification, least privilege controls, layered defense-in-depth, and encryption of data-in-transit to deter threats and limit access in the event of a breach. Kubernetes is particularly vulnerable to the spread of malware as a result of the open nature of cluster networking. By default, any pod can connect to any other pod, even across namespaces. Without a strong security framework, it’s very difficult to detect malware or its spread within a Kubernetes cluster.
Zero Trust policies rely on real-time visibility into workloads, Continue reading
Making HCI Hay While the Sun Shines
Whenever enterprise server buyers are shopping, they are not just comparing the possible options on the market today against each other. …
Making HCI Hay While the Sun Shines was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.
Getting Started with Docker Using Node.js(Part I)
A step-by-step guide to help you get started using Docker containers with your Node.js apps.
Prerequisites
To complete this tutorial, you will need the following:
- Free Docker Account
- You can sign-up for a free Docker account and receive free unlimited public repositories
- Docker running locally
- Node.js version 12.18 or later
- An IDE or text editor to use for editing files. I would recommend VSCode
Docker Overview
Docker is an open platform for developing, shipping, and running applications. Docker enables you to separate your applications from your infrastructure so you can deliver software quickly.
With Docker, you can manage your infrastructure in the same ways you manage your applications. By taking advantage of Docker’s methodologies for shipping, testing, and deploying code quickly, you can significantly reduce the delay between writing code and running it in production.
Sample Application
Let’s create a simple Node.js application that we’ll use as our example. Create a directory on your local machine named node-docker and follow the steps below to create a simple REST API.
$ cd [path to your node-docker directory]
$ npm init -y
$ npm install ronin-server ronin-mocks
$ Continue readingNext Platform TV for September 3, 2020
A Linux distro natively tuned for containers (and open source); FPGAs in Space; funding for spin qubits (among other quantum tech); the IO500 and evaluating large-scale storage systems; an automotive company’s AI supercomputer; much more…
Linked timestamps for all interviews below for those who want to skip ahead/around.
Next Platform TV for September 3, 2020 was written by Nicole Hemsoth at The Next Platform.
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- Learn the stuff they don't teach you in the AWS docs. Filter out the distracting hype, and focus on the parts of AWS that Continue reading