My Cisco DevNet Core Exam Journey

Cisco DevNet Specialist

On 23 October 2020, I took and passed the Cisco Certified DevNet Professional Core exam (350-901 DEVCOR) on my first attempt. I explain here the resources I used to study and pass this exam. My background and experience Before I explain what and how I have studied, you need to understand what I already knew, what was my background and experience with some of the topics of the exam before I started to study for it. At the end of April 2018, I already passed a Cisco specialist certification on…

The post My Cisco DevNet Core Exam Journey appeared first on AboutNetworks.net.

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  • Developers care about shipping secure applications. Application security products and processes, however, have not kept up with advances in software development. There are a new breed of tools hitting the market that enable developers to take the lead on AppSec. Learn how Continue reading

Review: CPLAY2air Wireless CarPlay Adapter

In late September, I was given a CPLAY2air wireless CarPlay adapter as a gift. Neither of my vehicles support wireless CarPlay, and so I was looking forward to using the CPLAY2air device to enable the use of CarPlay without having to have my phone plugged into a cable. Here’s my feedback on the CPLAY2air device after about six weeks of use.

In general, the device works reasonably well. Setup with the factory radio in my GMC Sierra truck was pretty straightforward, and only took a few minutes. Since then, the device connects to my phone every time I start the vehicle, and all CarPlay functions—music, maps, Siri, sending/reading messages, etc.—all work as expected. I can leave my phone in my pocket and still gain all the benefits of CarPlay, which is incredibly convenient.

The CPLAY2air is not without a few caveats, however. The wireless connection between the CPLAY2air and my iPhone does introduce some noticeable latency. When switching music tracks, for example, it will take between one and three seconds to stop playing the old track and start playing the new track. (By comparison, the same operation using traditional wired CarPlay is nearly instantaneous.) Similarly, when talking on Continue reading

Bienvenue Cloudflare France! Why I’m helping Cloudflare grow in France

Bienvenue Cloudflare France! Why I’m helping Cloudflare grow in France

If you'd like to read this post in French click here.

Bienvenue Cloudflare France! Why I’m helping Cloudflare grow in France

I am incredibly excited to announce that I have joined Cloudflare as its Head of France to help build a better Internet and expand the company’s growing customer base in France. This is an important milestone for Cloudflare as we continue to grow our presence in Europe. Alongside our London, Munich, and Lisbon offices, Paris marks the fourth Cloudflare office in the EMEA region. With this, we’ll be able to further serve our customers’ demand, recruit local talent, and build on the successes we’ve had in our other offices around the globe. I have been impressed by what Cloudflare has built in EMEA including France, and I am even more excited by what lies ahead for our customers, partners, and employees.

Born in Paris and raised in Paris, Normandie and Germany, I started my career more than 20 years ago. While a teenager, I had the chance to work on one of the first Apple IIe’s available in France. I have always had a passion for technology and continue to be amazed by the value of its adoption with businesses large and small. In former roles as Solution Engineer Continue reading

Fast Failover: The Challenge

Sometimes you’re asked to design a network that will reroute around a failure in milliseconds. Is that feasible? Maybe. Is it simple? Absolutely not.

In this series of blog posts we’ll start with the basics, explore the technologies that you can use to reach that goal, and discover one or two unexpected rabbit holes.

Fast failover is just one of the topics we’ll discuss in Advanced Routing Protocol Features part of How Networks Really Work webinar.
Read more …

Fast Failover: The Challenge

Sometimes you’re asked to design a network that will reroute around a failure in milliseconds. Is that feasible? Maybe. Is it simple? Absolutely not.

In this series of blog posts we’ll start with the basics, explore the technologies that you can use to reach that goal, and discover one or two unexpected rabbit holes.

Fast failover is just one of the topics we’ll discuss in Advanced Routing Protocol Features part of How Networks Really Work webinar.
Read more …

Tech Bytes: Nation-Wide Dentistry Network Chooses Integrated SD-WAN, SD-Branch, Security With Fortinet (Sponsored)

Today’s Tech Bytes, sponsored by Fortinet, explores an SD-WAN deployment with Smile Brands, a nation-wide network of dental practices. Smile Brands started with one SD-WAN product and then switched to an integrated security, SD-WAN, and SD-Branch solution with Fortinet. Our guest is Brett Stetzko, Senior Network Engineer at Smile Brands.

Tech Bytes: Nation-Wide Dentistry Network Chooses Integrated SD-WAN, SD-Branch, Security With Fortinet (Sponsored)

Today’s Tech Bytes, sponsored by Fortinet, explores an SD-WAN deployment with Smile Brands, a nation-wide network of dental practices. Smile Brands started with one SD-WAN product and then switched to an integrated security, SD-WAN, and SD-Branch solution with Fortinet. Our guest is Brett Stetzko, Senior Network Engineer at Smile Brands.

The post Tech Bytes: Nation-Wide Dentistry Network Chooses Integrated SD-WAN, SD-Branch, Security With Fortinet (Sponsored) appeared first on Packet Pushers.

COVID-19 Cyberthreat and Malware Updates

It has been over three months since our last report on COVID-19–themed attacks [1]. During this period, the tragedy of the COVID-19 pandemic has continued to dominate our daily livesfe. On the digital virus side, sSince our lastthat report [1, ] we’ have been closely tracking the cyberthreat landscape that leveraging leverages the COVID-19 themes. In the last report, we discovered that the majority of the attacks were involved infostealers. The oIn observations made from over the past two months,  witnessed similar infostealers1 as reported in [ again played a key role1]. HoweverIn the meanwhile, we also detected other threats not that we hadn’t seen earlier, such as the Emotet campaign and remote access Trojan (RAT) attacks.  

In this blog post, we first present the our most recent telemetry data, as reported by some VMware customers,, in order to exhibit highlight the diversity and magnitude of the attacks. Next, we investigate the Emotet campaign, as it is the most dominant wave seen in this period. More specifically, we analyze one of the samples from the campaign to reveal the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) used in the attack, and discuss how the Emotet payload variant is different from the one we reported recently [2].2 

The post COVID-19 Cyberthreat and Malware Updates appeared first on Network and Security Virtualization.

Cisco Project Bridges Kubernetes and SD-WAN to Speed Microservice Messaging

SD-WAN ( software-defined networking in a wide area network) and Kubernetes are two major technological developments of interest for businesses on the journey toward digital transformation. SD-WAN extends the SDN feature programmable network and automation to the WAN networks. And Kubernetes has largely adopted a containerized application orchestrator that has solid API architecture, autoscaling, deep monitoring, and load balancing capabilities for dynamic and distributed infrastructures. Many companies are using them together, given that business applications are distributed to different data centers and edge cloud locations. Here, different Kubernetes clusters are connected to end-user applications and workloads, and SD-WAN is used to connect all the clusters and end users. Sagar Nangare Sagar Nangare is technology blogger, focusing on data center technologies (Networking, Telecom, Cloud, Storage) and emerging domains like Edge Computing, IoT, Machine Learning, AI). He is currently serving Calsoft Inc. as Digital Strategist. He is based in Pune. You can reach to him on Twitter @sagarnangare. But there are still gaps in this amalgamated solution. SD-WAN is used mostly on the public internet, which has different performances in different parts of the world. When we deploy microservice-based applications there may be cases where some microservices may have specific latency requirements Continue reading

Network Break 309: Arista Rolls Out New Campus Switches; Financial Reporting Roundup

Guest commentator Johna Till Johnson, CEO of Nemertes Research, brings her analytical eye to this week's Network Break. Coverage includes new Arista campus switches, a Dutch telco shutting down legacy TDM systems, Google Chrome getting its own certificate store, and a massive Bitcoin seizure.

The post Network Break 309: Arista Rolls Out New Campus Switches; Financial Reporting Roundup appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Technical Debt (or Is Future Proofing Even a Good Idea?)

What, really, is “technical debt?” It’s tempting to say “anything legacy,” but then why do we need a new phrase to describe “legacy stuff?” Even the prejudice against legacy stuff isn’t all that rational when you think about it. Something that’s old might also just be well-tested, or well-worn but still serviceable. Let’s try another tack.

Technical debt, in the software world, can be defined as working on a piece of software for long periods of time by only adding features, and never refactoring or reorganizing the code to meet current conditions. The general idea is that as new features are added on top of the old, two things happen. First, the old stuff becomes a sort of opaque box that no-one understands. Second, the stuff being added to the old increasingly relies on public behavior that might be subject to unintended consequences or leaky abstractions.

To resolve this problem in the software world, software is “refactored.” In refactoring, every use of a public API is examined, including what information is being drawn out, or what the expected inputs and outputs are. The old code is then “discarded,” in a sense, and a new underlying function written Continue reading

The Week in Internet News: Facebook Considers New Ways to Combat Disinformation

More moderation: Facebook is looking at new ways to moderate posts on its site to make it more difficult for election disinformation to spread, the New York Times reports. Facebook is looking at adding more “friction,” such as an additional click or two, before users can share posts, according to insiders in the company. The new measures were expected shortly.

Millions without access: About 63 percent of rural residents in Latin America and the Caribbean ­– 77 million people – have little or no access to Internet services, according to a study by the Inter-American Development Bank and Microsoft, Nearshore Americas says. By comparison, about 71 percent of urban residents in the region have access to the Internet.

Bracing for regulation: Residents of Nigeria are expecting the government to move to regulate social media after recent protests, Quartz Africa on Yahoo reports. “We must regulate social media in a manner that it does not become a purveyor of fake news and hate speech,” Nigeria’s minister of information Lai Mohammed said recently. “We will not fold our arms to allow purveyors of fake news and hate speech to use the social media to destabilize the country.”

Right to repair: Campaigners across Continue reading

Making HPC And AI More Accessible To Enterprises

For more than a decade, as they have watched the amount of data they are generating stack up and technologies like artificial intelligence and analytics come to the forefront, enterprises have turned an eye toward high performance computing equipment and tools to help them get a handle on all of it. …

Making HPC And AI More Accessible To Enterprises was written by Jeffrey Burt at The Next Platform.

Virtual consensus in Delos

Virtual consensus in Delos, Balakrishnan et al. (Facebook, Inc.), OSDI’2020


Before we dive into this paper, if you click on the link above and then download and open up the paper pdf you might notice the familiar red/orange splash of USENIX, and appreciate the fully open access. USENIX is a nonprofit organisation committed to making content and research freely available – both conference proceedings and the recorded presentations of their events. Without in-person conferences this year, income is down and events are under threat. If you want to help them, you have options to donate, become a member, or even talk to your organisation about becoming a partner, benefactor, or patron. Every little helps!


Back in 2017 the engineering team at Facebook had a problem. They needed a table store to power core control plane services, which meant strong guarantees on durability, consistency, and availability. They also needed it fast – the goal was to be in production within 6 to 9 months. While ultimately this new system should be able to take advantage of the latest advances in consensus for improved performance, that’s not realistic given a 6-9 month in-production target. So realistically Continue reading

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