Human Infrastructure 349: Building A Server Rack At Home

April 11, 2024

THIS WEEK’S MUST-READ BLOGS 🤓

Michael builds out a rack. Lots of details, lots of pictures, lots of screenshots. He tells you what he did and why he did it, covering everything from the rack itself to a wireless AP, power strips, UPS, cables, cable management, shelves, switches, out-of-band management, and more. He also links to pretty much every product he used. As thorough a post on a home lab build as you could hope for. - Ethan

This piece discusses how difficult it is for organizations to leave whatever IT system they find themselves with. Why? The system is too hard to break up. There are myriad interdependencies that make change too difficult for many organizations. Thus, we have a brittle inertia. How does an organization combat this? There is no clear answer, because the answers that seem clear are likely oversimplified. “Oh, we’ll move to the cloud! That will solve the problem of this complicated tech stack we built in-house.” For years, companies have tried that only to discover the same problems they had with their homegrown tech stack existed in the cloud as well, plus now they’re paying more money to rent someone else’s computers. The point of the article is that the simple IT solution almost never is. Much goes on behind the scenes that decision makers might not be paying attention to. - Ethan

Dave Karpf reviews multiple essays and blogs that try to forecast the trajectory for AI and LLMs by looking at previous applications (specifically, spreadsheets and word processors) that had a significant impact on the utility of computers for the general public. It’s a great collection of links if you want to get various perspectives on the once and future utility of AI. But what really jumped out to me is Karp’s essential question: “How we view the present and future of Artificial Intelligence probably turns on what we think about the current state of capitalism. Is A.I. going to inevitably improve (because markets)? Or is A.I. inevitably going to hollow out industries while providing shittier services (because markets)?” - Drew

Ivan Pepelnjak addresses whether or not campus mobility (think roaming devices in large campus networks) would work better in a LISP vs. EVPN environment. He thinks through the MAC learning process as well as FIB installation rates, and doesn’t think LISP vs. EVPN could possibly matter much. Click for all the analytical details. - Ethan

Alan Kirby tells the tale of the first Ethernet bridge as created by Mark Kempf, explaining what was going on with shared coaxial Ethernets at the time and the competition felt from Token Ring and FDDI. The bridge is what saved Ethernet, enabling Ethernets to scale beyond their original limits. Of course, early bridges evolved into the network switches we have taken for granted for many years now. But there was a time, not that long ago, when you had to make a budgetary decision between a switch and a hub. Explaining to your boss why a switch (that looked pretty much the same as a hub) was so much better was always fun. - Ethan

TECH NEWS 📣

InfoWorld has taken some heat for publishing this piece, although it seems like a conscientious effort to get it right was made by the author. I’m not close to the OpenTofu/Terraform contest, and have no opinion about Hashicorp’s allegations. But allegations there are. Lawyers are involved. OpenTofu has responded. While you’re eating your popcorn, ponder whether open source is the right avenue for your project. There are many folks re-thinking their FOSS strategy these days. - Ethan

NIST as a US government institution has a few roles but analyzing and publishing  IT vulnerabilities aka ‘CVE’ might be the most important. The situation is dire: “According to its own data, NIST has analyzed only 199 Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs) out of the 2957 it has received so far in March.” The article outlines what seems to be happening (underfunding, lack of vendor engagement, and so on) but it's not quite clear why the dramatic falloff in a single quarter.  - Greg

This piece documents the latest notable open source software package to change licensing terms, Redis. Author Joe Brockmeier thoroughly documents the history of Redis, the changes they’ve made, and thoughtfully speculates as to why that might have happened. To Joe, it’s not as easy as “because AWS is making big money off of our code.” Other possibilities are highlighted. Joe also mentioned the leading Redis replacements, should you be shopping for one, including KeyDB and the new Linux Foundation Valkey project. - Ethan

FOR THE LULZ 🤣

RESEARCH & RESOURCES 📒

This ACM article considers that AI’s impact on computer science is similar  to the impact of calculators on mathematics. Why should early career people spend time on non-automated technology when LLMs can generate code effectively ? Teaching should now focus on embracing AI tools while understanding their weaknesses and strengths. - Greg

Tony Bourke is an IT instructor. He’s just launched Project NERD, which he describes as “a collection of tutorials and accompanying artifacts (files, playbooks, scripts, etc.) to build certain types of VMs and containers that aid in network automation, specifically labbing of network automation.” The first project he’s released is a VM that includes several tools to help you run a virtual leaf/spine EVPN/VXLAN network to lab and experiment with. The VM includes VS Code, Ansible, and containerlab. The lab can run a containerized version of Arista’s EOS and Nokia’s SR Linux. That’s cool! (And if you want to learn the fundamentals of EVPN and a little VXLAN, check out this episode of Heavy Networking we recorded with Tony.) - Drew

Network automation training company Packet Coders has released several free-to-use tools. These include a Jinja Renderer, TTP Parser, TextFSM Parser, JSON Schema Validator, and a Data Format Converter. Packet Pushers has recorded with Packet Coders’ Rick Donato before. Click here to find those podcast episodes. - Ethan

INDUSTRY BLOGS & VENDOR ANNOUNCEMENTS 💬 

Google provides some insights into protecting its DNS saying “We have implemented the basic countermeasures outlined in RFC 5452 namely randomizing query source ports and query IDs. But these measures alone are not sufficient” and then its references OARC presentations. Every time I scratch a DNS itch, I discover just how complicated and fractured it’s become. This Google team is recommending that users switch to DNS-over-TLS.

Wi-Fi 6E takes advantage of the 6Ghz band, which the FCC made available for unlicensed use back in 2020. Its initial rollout came with limitations to ensure that unlicensed use didn’t interfere with existing licensed users (such as microwave-based services and radio astronomy). One restriction was to limit unlicensed use to low-power, indoor operation. At the same time, the FCC set up a mechanism called Automated Frequency Coordination (AFC) to test and track where standard-power use would–and wouldn’t–interfere with licensed operators. That AFC framework is now tested and operational, meaning wireless AP vendors that coordinate with AFC providers to avoid interference can sell Wi-Fi 6E APs that can operate at standard power both indoors and outdoors. Cisco is one of those vendors. The blog post linked above has more details about AFC and Cisco’s conformant portfolio. - Drew

Akamai has announced a new service, called Shield NS53, that aims to protect your on-prem and hybrid DNS servers against resource exhaustion attacks that try to knock sites offline by flooding DNS servers with invalid queries. Shield NS53 can also be used in conjunction with Akamai’s own cloud-based DNS offering, called Edge DNS.  - Drew

Benoît, one of the chairs of the newly formed IETF NMOP working group, offers the following TL;DR. “There is a new cool NMOP working group just created, with 4 important operational topics (YANG-Push & Kafka, anomaly detection and incident management, digital modeling, and collecting operator operational requirements). You should, at the very minimum, be aware. You should be involved, especially if you are an operator.” - Ethan

LAST LAUGH 😆