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- Human Infrastructure 351: The Benefits of a "WTF?" Notebook
Human Infrastructure 351: The Benefits of a "WTF?" Notebook
THIS WEEK’S MUST-READ BLOGS 🤓
Sysadmin friendly high speed ethernet switching - Ben JoJo
https://blog.benjojo.co.uk/post/sn2010-linux-hacking-switchdev
Ben digs into the Mellanox SN2010 switch. Uh…router. Okay, Ben calls it a “swooter”. He wanted a somewhat portable & affordable lab switch with lots of forwarding capacity that he could run Debian Linux on. It took some doing, but he’s made it work thanks to the mlxsw drivers and some Linux wrenching. He shares all the details to get this done in your lab. - Ethan
OSPF – Once in your head, it really is open shortest path first ;) - Christian’s Juniper Blog
https://jncie.eu/ospf-once-in-your-head-it-really-is-open-shortest-path-first/
Christian is prepping for an exam, and shares a few study notes on OSPF. If you’ve ever taken a networking exam, most of this material should look familiar.
Related…I’m reading through OSPF and IS-IS by Jeff Doyle. If you’d like a reference that really gets into the nitty-gritty of these protocols, you’ll like this book. Jeff wrote it assuming the reader has probably worked with OSPF and wants to learn IS-IS. Each chapter compares + contrasts these two link-state protocols down to the bit level. As usual with Jeff’s writing, the book is thoughtfully structured and easy to read. The book is nearly 20 years old, so won’t have all the latest RFCs covered, of which there are many. Nevertheless, the book remains a valuable reference. - Ethan
DHCP Reservations – Active or Inactive? - Majornetwork
https://majornetwork.net/2024/04/dhcp-reservations-active-or-inactive/
Markku Leiniö walks through how to detect if a DHCP reservation is still being used or not, a good thing to know if you’re careful about managing your IP scopes. His example focuses on the Microsoft Windows Server 2022 DHCP service. - Ethan
Jeff Huston takes you on a guided tour of signal transmission methods across fiber optic cable as a way to introduce coherent optical transceivers. I suspect you’ll be hearing more about coherent optics on the Packet Pushers network. Coherent optics promise to reduce network cost and complexity. - Ethan
Do You Even Need Antivirus Software in 2024? - The New Oil
https://blog.thenewoil.org/do-you-even-need-antivirus-software-in-2024
TL;DR. Probably not…but as always, it depends. - Ethan
Why you need a "WTF Notebook" - Simpler Machines
Getting started in a new job means a new team, work, and processes. You are keen to impress, to dig in, show your value and all that stuff. This article considers that taking two weeks to listen and keep a WTF notebook will help to avoid mistakes. In essence it's a slow but steady approach to fitting in without making mistakes saying something like “That’s stupid, you shouldn’t do it like that” and then finding out there is a good reason. - Greg
TECH NEWS 📣
Snowmobile, Amazon's truck-powered migration service, reaches the end of the road - The Register
https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/17/amazon_snowmobile_delay/
Used to be that Amazon would send a truck full of disk to your site so that you could load it up and port that data to the cloud. Trucknet! WANs and bandwidth and latency, you see. Alas, Trucknet Snowmobile is no more. AWS Snowball is the alternative to solve the massive-amounts-of-data-you-don’t-want-to-shove-through-WANs-bandwidth-latency-problem you might have these days. - Drew
TSMC’s debacle in the American desert - Rest of World
https://restofworld.org/2024/tsmc-arizona-expansion/
We don’t often see culture clashes after three decades of globalization - most companies have converged on common structures and processes - except maybe TSMC. From the article in Rest of World: “The American engineers complained of rigid, counterproductive hierarchies at the company; Taiwanese TSMC veterans described their American counterparts as lacking the kind of dedication and obedience they believe to be the foundation of their company’s world-leading success.” The TSMC plant in Arizona is politically important, which adds to the business stakes, but I’d bet there are some people who don’t like being told and think they know better even though TSMC is the world leader in chip production. Gonna be a tough few years ahead. - Greg
FOR THE LULZ 🤣
RESEARCH & RESOURCES 📒
Shame-as-a-Service. Just like how SaaS solutions give you the tools you need right when you need them, our version of SaaS delivers a potent dose of public "shame" to domains still lagging in IPv6 support. Through user-submitted campaigns and data-driven reports, we spotlight these slackers, providing that gentle nudge (or push!) to get them on the IPv6 train.
Not just a snarky site, WhyNoIPv6.com scans each domain from Tranco's top-ranked list every 3 days to evaluate critical IPv6 adoption metrics. Specifically, we check for the existence of IPv6 DNS records and MX records. The data gleaned from these scans is then aggregated, analyzed, and made publicly available. - Ethan
Testing ntttcp as an iperf3 alternative in Windows 11 (and Linux) - CNX Software
https://www.cnx-software.com/2024/04/22/testing-ntttcp-iperf3-alternative-windows-11-linux/
Jean-Luc Aufranc at CNX Software wants to know if Microsoft’s ntttcp is a better throughput testing tool than iperf3. He runs tests under various scenarios, and…he’s not exactly overwhelmed by the results he’s seeing from ntttcp. Not bad, just not a gamechanger on a level that makes him want to stop using iperf3. Jean-Luc documents his platforms, testing parameters, and drivers so that you understand the context of his results. YMMV, of course. - Ethan
Transforming Human Interaction with Data Using Large Language Models and Generative AI - Phil Gervasi via Kentik
https://www.kentik.com/blog/transforming-human-interaction-with-data-using-llms-and-genai/
Phil Gervasi has written a comprehensive overview of how Large Language Models (LLMs) work. It’s a long piece, but very much worth taking the time to read. He describes a brief history of natural language processing, goes into the various approaches that have been used to train computers to process human language, and current models for training LLMs, including n-grams and neural networks. He discusses issues with hallucinations, and looks at applications for LLM in IT ops. This is definitely one to bookmark and come back to, particularly if you’ve got a meeting coming up with a vendor looking to sell you the latest AI-enhanced product. - Drew
INDUSTRY BLOGS & VENDOR ANNOUNCEMENTS 💬
Building a Stable Future for the RIPE NCC - RIPE Labs
https://labs.ripe.net/author/remco-van-mook/building-a-stable-future-for-the-ripe-ncc/
In this call to action (but not call for alarm), Remco van Mook outlines the challenges European RIR RIPE is facing, explaining how the organization has outgrown the past and needs to rebuild to thrive in the future. Remco raises issues of governance, financing, membership structure, and more.
In his conclusion, Remco states, This article is simply an attempt to get this conversation started in broad terms. The plan is to discuss this in person during RIPE 88 later in May - I also hope to get a slot for a BOF on this topic from the RIPE Program Committee. But ahead of that, myself and my colleagues on the Board and at the RIPE NCC want to hear from both members of the RIPE NCC and others in the Internet community. Time to engage. - Ethan
Zscaler Extends Zero Trust SASE Leadership and Eliminates the Need for Firewall-Based Segmentation - Zscaler Press Releases
https://www.zscaler.com/press/zscaler-extends-zero-trust-sase-leadership-and-eliminates-need-firewall-based-segmentation
Zscaler is acquiring Airgap Networks. This puts Zscaler into your data center protecting east-west traffic. In theory, you’ll be able to build a cohesive zero trust network architecture across LAN & WAN with this tech. Let’s hope the integration is more thorough than a re-branded dashboard. - Ethan
Alkira Expands Cloud Exchange Point (CXP) Footprint into Google Cloud Platform (GCP) - Alkira Blog
https://www.alkira.com/blog/alkira-expands-cloud-exchange-point-cxp-footprint-into-google-cloud-platform-gcp/
The Alkira team reports, “We’re thrilled to announce that Alkira’s Cloud Exchange Point (CXP) is now available in all commercial regions of Google Cloud Platform (GCP).” And why does this matter? Because an Alkira CXP allows you to connect to anywhere—other clouds, on-premises, etc. while doing so securely. You want to extend your multi-cloud network beyond GCP’s borders? It just got easier for Alkira’s customers. - Ethan
Z80 Product line: Z84C00 End of Life/Last Time Buy Notification - Mouser
https://www.mouser.com/PCN/Littelfuse_PCN_Z84C00.pdf
Mouser is the company that sells Z80 CPUs and after 48 years it has announced the end of production. The Z80 CPU has remained an 8-bit processor with speed and feature progression (as best I can tell). I can’t help but feel the rise of ARM combined with widespread use of small programmable chips has taken away its purpose. I did learn some Z80 assembler and fixed Z80 computer hardware of various types with circuit diagrams, oscilloscopes, solder suckers and replacing chips, but I don’t have any nostalgia for this CPU. I might be broken. - Greg
Aviatrix Simplifies Diagnosis of Application Network Performance with New Network Insights API - Aviatrix
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/aviatrix-simplifies-diagnosis-of-application-network-performance-with-new-network-insights-api-302119520.html
Aviatrix, which provides overlay networking for private and public clouds, has announced a new API that lets you export network monitoring and network performance metrics to popular data visualization tools including Datadog, Grafana, and New Relic. The API has been added to Aviatrix’s CoPilot management interface. The company says it’s also now supporting OpenMetrics standards and provides a Prometheus endpoint collector. From the press release: “At the request of customers who also use application monitoring platforms for their cloud operations, incident management, and app development teams, Aviatrix now adds support for OpenMetrics standards. More than 40 observability vendors now support Prometheus and OpenMetrics.” - Drew
Cloudbrink targets remote access bottleneck with packet loss tool - Cloudbrink
https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2024/04/23/2867706/0/en/Cloudbrink-targets-remote-access-bottleneck-with-packet-loss-tool.html
Cloudbrink is an alternative to the traditional VPN client. It combines agent software you install on endpoint devices, a Connector you deploy in front of your data center applications, and “soft” Points of Presence that spin up in the nearest public cloud location to an end user. The agent on the end user’s device connects to the PoP, and then rides across the cloud provider’s network to get to the destination, such as a SaaS app or a traditional client-server app on your premises.
The company has released a free tool that it says can assess the impact of packet loss on network performance for remote users. It does this by simulating “the network conditions users are likely to experience working from home on consumer-grade broadband or when on the road using cellular networks and hotel, airport or coffee shop Wi-Fi,” according to the press release. The company says IT pros can use it to evaluate VPNs, Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) products, and other remote access solutions. How much reliance you put into a tool to test VPN performance designed by a company competing with VPNs is up to you, but it might be interesting to play around with. You have to fill out a survey to download the tool. - Drew
The open-source project OpenZiti just released version 1.0 of the software. OpenZiti lets you build zero-trust network overlays into applications. Here’s some use cases for OpenZiti from the blog post announcing the 1.0 release:
Developing next-generation network applications with built-in security, privacy, and reliability, using a clean, modern software-first abstraction. (ala zrok)
Remotely manage your software, devices, or machines in security-conscious sites such as OT environments via your own private, high-performance network without requiring your customers to open inbound firewall ports or provide VPN/bastion-type solutions.
Enable users or customers to consume private APIs, use private websites, and access private databases without requiring those users or customers to be on the same administrative domain, network, or VPN.
Enable operations teams to lock down environments such as Kubernetes. For example, kubectl becomes completely ‘dark’ in an OpenZiti architecture.
By the way, for more open-source networking, check out our curated list of 136 projects. - Drew