Human Infrastructure 382: A Wrap on 2024

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Ethan Banks & Drew Conry-Murray
December 19, 2024

Thanks for a Great Year!

This is the final Human Infrastructure for 2024. We wish you Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year! We also want to thank you for your time and attention over the past twelve months.

2024 was big year here at Packet Pushers Global HQ.

For one, we said goodbye to co-founder Greg Ferro. Greg is a unique and inimitable voice in this industry. His departure had us (OK, me) wondering if we could keep an audience without him. So far the answer is yes, and for that we’re thankful.

For another, we launched four brand new shows in 2024: Packet Protector, N Is For Networking, Total Network Operations, and Technically Leadership. We also welcomed new hosts including Jennifer “JJ” Minella, Eric Chou (who brought his already-running Network Automation Nerds podcast to the platform), Holly Metlitzky, Scott Robohn, Kyler Middleton, and Laura Santamaria. These hosts are practitioners, authors, and experts in their fields, and we’re excited they’re here to share their experiences, enthusiasm, and curiosity.

We also overhauled our Web site, launched a merch store, and served as the media partner for two excellent AutoCon conferences.

In other words, it’s been a busy year and we’re a little tired. But it’s a good tired. Now here at the close of 2024, we’re pausing podcast production for a couple of weeks to let everyone rest. We hope you can also rest and get ready for 2025. We’ll see you there! - Drew

THIS WEEK’S MUST-READ BLOGS 🤓

Josh notes the popularity of Containerlab, an open source project, birthed out of Nokia, that lets you build network labs using containerized images of network operating systems. Josh describes some benefits of network container images, including faster boot times, more efficient resource usage, and the ability to get ambitious–like maybe building a digital twin of your network. Josh writes “Of all of these capabilities that are being developed, the idea of a digital twin for a network of size starts to become a possibility.” - Drew

Tom Hollingsworth argues that Intel may be on a path to irrelevance if the next CEO focuses exclusively on cutting costs. Ex-CEO Pat Gelsinger made a big bet that Intel could build a foundry business that would lead the company into the future. But that strategy required a lot of capital–billions upon billions–before Intel would see any profit.  Investors fixated on quarterly results got fed up with money going out the door instead of coming in.

If the next CEO focuses on cutting costs to nudge the share price back up, what happens next? Tom writes “CEOs that have no vision will make things look great for investors for a quarter or maybe two until the easy costs are cut. Then it’s time to produce. However, you’ve stifled your workforce and your research teams because they weren’t making immediate profit. So your company is now in trouble because there isn’t a way to produce more income and costs are at a minimum.” 

My own guess is that the next CEO won’t have the stomach to truly invest in the foundry strategy, which means either they will take half-measures and have it limp along until it dies of starvation, or immediately seek to spin it off. I expect we’ll hear a lot of noise about Intel “redoubling its focus” on CPUs to regain its old crown, and probably some hand-waving toward AI accelerators, but I wouldn’t bet on boldness from the next boss. - Drew

Mist Campus Fabrics now can support the virtual JunOS switch. Why should you care? If you’re in the Mist and Juniper camp, Christian writes “It means that from this day forward, we no longer need to wait for physical boxes to deploy a Juniper MIST Campus Fabric in advance. This also means that we can fully design the whole Fabric (a full blown dry-run including Application-Tests if you have a virtual copy of it) and once the final boxes arrive just add the devices in our Blueprint, remove the virtual ones – done!” - Drew

If you’re wondering why NIST has released quantum-resistant encryption algorithms when quantum computers are still in their infancy, Geoff Huston has answers. This long read provides essential background on the RSA and ECC algorithms in use today, and why they aren’t suited to a post-quantum environment. 

He writes “The present danger lies in an attacker performing data capture now, in anticipation of being able to post-process it at a later date with a Cryptographically Relevant Quantum Computer (CRQC). There is even an acronym for this, Harvest Now, Decrypt Later (HNDL).” He also considers the implementation work that will have to happen to get quantum-resistant algorithms incorporated into public key infrastructure systems, and looks at practical challenges for DNSSEC in particular. - Drew

TL;DR - It’s hard to get an RFC through the IETF process. If you’re interested in the gory details, Ben walks through his own experience spending three and a half years with a small group of co-authors to bring RFC9687 to life. If you can’t get enough detail on the process, Russ White wrote a series about submitting an idea to the IETF for Packet Pushers. - Drew 

Bruce Davie recounts how MPLS (tag switching) came to be, along with its support for traceroute. If you like networking history, read this account from someone who was there. Plenty of detail with explanations of why certain tradeoffs were made. - Ethan

MORE BLOGS

Talk to your network in natural language with Nokia EDA Query Language (EQL)

Nokia’s Event-Driven Automation (EDA) is a data center infrastructure automation platform that reacts to events in real time, easily adapting to evolving environments, and delivering reliable operations. With EDA, you can interact with your network using natural language, including a powerful tool called the EDA Query Language (EQL).

EQL allows you to query the state of the network at any moment in time, in natural language. Leveraging streaming telemetry, EQL allows for advanced data analysis, including filtering, sorting, and applying functions, making it a robust tool for troubleshooting and creating customized dashboards with rich visual insights.

In this episode of Video Bytes, Ethan Banks speaks with Erwan James, Nokia’s Principal Product Line Manager, for a live demonstration of how EQL works. Don’t miss it!

TECH NEWS 📣

Tech Crunch provides a timeline of companies that started out as open source projects and then, for various reasons, changed course. A project from open to closed used to risk incurring a “sellout” vibe. These days, several popular open source projects have shifted because large cloud freeriders were building services on top without contributing back, which to my mind is much more justifiable. - Drew

The European Space Agency and a consortium of European satellite companies are developing a broadband satellite offering meant to serve as an alternative to Starlink and other private providers.  Dubbed IRIS², the goal is to get 290 satellites in orbit over the next few years, with service becoming available in 2030. It’s clear that member states within the European Union don’t want to rely on the mercurial whims of private owners of space broadband services, particularly for services offered to governments and businesses in the EU. - Drew 

Several US government agencies are actively investigating TP-Link on the premise that their devices could be used to launch cyberattacks. Made in China, TP-Link gear is cheap and consequently popular.

“Concerns over Chinese-made routers came to the fore in October when Microsoft published a cybersecurity report that found that a network of hackers uses compromised devices manufactured by TP-Link. The report alleged that Chinese-based cybercriminals used routers made by TP-Link to launch ransomware and other cyberattacks.”

The view is that TP-Link doesn’t keep up with security patches. Reading between the lines, the implication is that TP-Link doesn’t keep up on purpose. - Ethan

The telco situation is so grim in Zimbabwe that internet users there are buying as much Starlink as Uncle Elon will sell them. So much, in fact, that folks are paying to be put on a waiting list as Starlink capacity continues to ramp.

“[Alois] Kachere, a network engineer, doesn’t know how long he’ll have to wait to get his hands on a Starlink kit, but he’s resolved to do what it takes. He put down a deposit of $50 to claim a spot on Starlink’s waiting list. “Even if it means I will wait until January, I don’t care. As long as it’s not Econet, Telecel, and NetOne,” he told Rest of World.”

Uncle Elon pointed out that outside of African urban centers, there is still Starlink capacity. It’s the cities that are struggling the most right now. - Ethan

Here’s a thread from the Fediverse of interest to Puppet users.

@GeneBean reports, “So, here's an updated tl;dr on #Puppet as an #OpenSource project: a fork is absolutely coming now. There was a "town hall" today in which Perforce made it quite clear they are going to claim they want to work with the community while not actually doing so. As a result, those of us who have been following this closely reassembled, determined there was no longer hope of really working together, and that it was time to move forward accordingly.”

Click through to read the rest of the thread featuring phrases like “our hand has been forced” and “pit of near despair”. - Ethan

MORE NEWS

FOR THE LULZ 🤣

RESEARCH & RESOURCES 📒

This one is admittedly the reverse for most of you, who are likely to be network engineers learning a programming language and not devs getting their heads around networking. I found the piece a gentle introduction to networking without being condescending, then quickly ramping to a useful amount of detail without falling down every rabbit hole strewn along the path. - Ethan

Here’s a Python tool to convert docs ya got (PDF, PPT, DOC, XLS, HTML, CSV, JSON, XML and more) into docs ya want (Markdown-formatted). - Ethan

ptcpdump - mozillazg (not Mozilla) via GitHub
https://github.com/mozillazg/ptcpdump

The README says, “ptcpdump is an eBPF-based implementation of tcpdump that includes an additional feature: it adds process information as comments for each packet when available.” Ptcpdump can filter by process ID and is both container- and Kubernetes-aware. Neat! - Ethan

MORE RESEARCH & RESOURCES

INDUSTRY BLOGS & VENDOR ANNOUNCEMENTS 💬 

Dell’Oro says Q3 was a bad quarter for campus Ethernet switching, with revenues plunging 24% vs. the same quarter last year. One reason might be that 2023 was a boom year, and companies are still “digesting” equipment they bought last year. Dell’Oro also forecasts that 2025 should see revenues tick back up. The press release notes “Wi-Fi 7 adoption will require multi-gig switch ports and Power-over-Ethernet, and this will fuel Campus Switch revenue growth in 2025.” - Drew 

Cisco’s Splunk is acquiring a threat detection company, SnapAttack, for an undisclosed amount. It sounds like the plan is to incorporate SnapAttack into Splunk’s SIEM platform to provide additional threat detection capabilities to enteprise SoCs. - Drew 

Ben Linsay, co-founder of Junction Labs talks through the many things that can go wrong with the DNS system, and argues that the situation is needless. Ben wants you to replace DNS on your private network with something better. Fascinating. We should get a briefing on what Junction Labs is up to. Ben does seem upset about the state of things… - Ethan

MORE INDUSTRY NOISES

DYSTOPIA IRL 🐙

TOO MANY LINKS WOULD NEVER BE ENOUGH 🐳

LAST LAUGH 😆