Most Disruptive Tech Is Boring

by Robert Wildauer

No industry talks about “disruption” more than tech. Disruption is built into the ethos of many tech firms and personalities; Facebook’s old motto of “move fast and break things” applied beyond the confines of its business. Startups and incumbents alike prefer to be seen as disruptive and world changing.

Tech is drawn to the kind of disruption that transforms an industry and captures or creates a brand-new market. Venture capitalists and investment banks hunt for “unicorns”—disruptive businesses so rare that they are almost mythical. Firms like Stripe and SpaceX shake up industries and become household names.

But unicorn-style disruption is, by definition, rare. There is a second form of disruption, as detailed in Harvard Business Review, that is much more common but also much more boring: low-end market disruption.

The Low End Theory

Low-end market disruption is pernicious to the stability of established, market-leading businesses. While incumbents tend to add new features and capabilities to their products in pursuit of profitable, high-end customers, low-end disrupters target price-sensitive or underserved customers. As low-end entrants gain market share, they slowly introduce more features and improve quality until they compete with industry leaders.

Consider Google Workspace (formerly Google Apps, then G Suite). Google found a foothold in K-12 and SMB spaces with a cheap (or free) alternative to Microsoft Office. Google Docs didn’t have feature parity with Microsoft Word. For example, mail merge and complicated macros were exclusively the domain of Word, but these features were only necessary for a small number of users. A “good enough” product that was easy to access and simple to use burrowed away at the foundations of the biggest incumbent in productivity software.

Within networking, a company such as Unifi offers low-cost managed network devices. Customers priced out of enterprise IT gear got access to cloud-managed devices and brought them into their networks. Over time, Unifi has introduced layer 3 switching, firewalls, and other products to establish a firmer market position. Similarly, whitebox switching offers commodity hardware and more pared-down (and affordable) network operating systems. Neither of these developments are as exciting as an AI-driven data center or zero-trust network architecture, but they are potentially important to consumers and vendors alike.

Low-cost alternatives to market incumbents should always be of interest to technology professionals. These “boring” disruptors might help you solve a problem without requiring significant capital investment. They can always be used as leverage when dealing with your incumbents. Whether it’s a new managed service provider nibbling at the edges of an ignored customer base or simply a “good enough” product that could help deliver reliable IT services, you’re more likely to benefit from a low-end disruptor than a fabled unicorn.

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Robert Wildauer is a network technician and staff supervisor for an MSP in central Pennsylvania. He has worked in the IT industry for over twelve years with a focus in Cisco networking.

THIS WEEK’S MUST-READ BLOGS 🤓

Performance Diagnostics Part 3 — Latency beyond Ping - Leigh Finch
This is an informative post on how (and why) to measure latency beyond just using the Ping utility. Besides providing some neat history on Ping and explaining why it’s not the most accurate latency measure, Leigh then gets into a couple of methods for measuring latency using the TCP 3-way handshake, as well as how to measure the results in Wireshark. I really appreciate the clarity of Leigh’s writing. - Drew

Source of Truth Series - Ecosystem - Daniel Techeney
A Source of Truth (SoT) is an industry term for a repository that has the most up-to-date and/or reliable information about a system. For example, IP address management software would be an SoT for IP addresses. Daniel Techeney has written a helpful series on SoTs, how they’re used, their technical and business value, and more. In the post linked above, he breaks down SoTs by systems, data models, and products, but the whole series is worth your time to read. - Drew

What I wish I knew when I got my ASN - Quantum
The author dives into the process of procuring a BGP ASN and IPv6 block, commenting on what he’s learned working with both the ARIN and RIPE RIRs. Lots of useful tidbits whether you’re interested in getting some Internet resources for your home lab or for your business. - Ethan

Tag your infrastructure-as-code resources with a link to their definitions - alexwlchan 
Alex aka Lexie recommends a simple step to help you remember where an IaC resource is defined--a tag with the URL where that definition lives (a specific path in your GitHub repo, for instance). That way, if you need to update a resource definition, you can do it the right way, and not just patch it in your code and forget to update the formal definition everyone should be working with. - Ethan

TECH NEWS 📣

Why companies still want in-house data centres - Economist
This Economist article might carry extra weight with Boomer executives and CIOs who don’t understand that on-prem data centres are cheaper and more effective in many use cases. The article outlines the savings but also spells out, using small words that boomers understand, when to choose off-prem or on-prem. Nice. - Greg

Putin's digital Iron Curtain: Russia bypasses sanctions, buys equipment to block YouTube and Telegram - The Insider 
Many people are concerned that the internet is splintering. Today the networking aspect of the internet is open to anyone and can connect to any other part of the global network. Increasingly China has restricted its internet to become a ‘splinter network’ and Russia has been working towards splintering for over a decade. Other countries are pursuing similar projects including India. This article examines what is known about the technology and where it comes from. For networking professionals building global SDWAN/SASE, it’s going to get harder in some countries to set up private and secure networks for corporate use. - Greg

35 Squid proxy bugs still unpatched after 2 years - The Register
There is an emerging narrative that Open Source projects are unsafe as their ability to maintain software is definitely under threat. This is more obvious in ‘infrastructure software’ like Squid proxy where usage is slowing, and developers have a lot of incentive to generate easy money on crypto or more honest work for a SaaS infrastructure company. At what point does this build up into an “open source is unsafe because there are no eyes on that code” story? - Greg

China requires any new domestic Wi-Fi kit to support IPv6 and run it by default - The Register
China is pushing IPv6 adoption via legislative edict. The way I read the quoted policy, any device with wireless LAN connectivity must support IPv6 and have it enabled by default. Therefore, if the device is connected to an IPv6-capable network, it will get an IPv6 address and be able to communicate with the Internet in that way. China hasn’t outlawed IPv4, but IPv6 is strongly preferred. - Ethan

Russia plans to try to block VPN services in 2024 - senator - Reuters
The Russian government is limiting the ability of its citizens to access world news on social media sites. “Demand for VPN services soared after Russia restricted access to some Western social media after President Vladimir Putin ordered troops into Ukraine in February 2022. Senator Artem Sheikin said an order from the Roskomnadzor watchdog would come into force on March 1 that would block VPNs. … Sheikin said that it was particularly important to block access to Meta Platforms (META.O), which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.” - Ethan

FOR THE LULZ 🤣

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RESEARCH & RESOURCES 📒

Wi-Fi Technology Guide - Intel
I found this Wi-Fi Technology Guide from Intel, which covers the highlights of wireless technology around Wi-Fi 7 and Wi-Fi 6/E. I’m not an expert in Wi-Fi and it’s hard to keep track of changes in the 6E/7 because they are so niche and specific to a small number of use cases. Everyone is keen to drive upgrades in Wi-Fi hardware to generate sales. but I’m not sure that the extra features are worth it for most companies. So it’s a case of finding out whether they apply to you. - Greg

Ruff v0.1.0 - Astral  
Zanie Blue reports, “As a reminder: Ruff is an extremely fast Python linter, written in Rust. Ruff can be used to replace Flake8 (plus dozens of plugins), isort, pydocstyle, pyupgrade, and more, all while executing tens or hundreds of times faster than any individual tool.” The 0.1.0 release offers increased stability, a preview mode, fix safety levels (not all fixes are “safe”), and versioning policy. - Ethan

INDUSTRY BLOGS & VENDOR ANNOUNCEMENTS 💬 

CNCF Working Group For the Deaf and Hard of Hearing - GitHub
The Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) has a working group for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing communities. This working group advocates for accessibility in tech for these communities. Most recently, the team developed recommendations for conference organizers on how to make live events more accessible for the deaf and hard of hearing. Some of those recommendations are going to being implemented at a KubeCon event in Chicago. That’s good news, and I hope to see more live events make these spaces more welcoming and inclusive. - Drew

AI’s $200B Question - Sequoia Capital
If you judge the start of the AI Boom when ChatGPT launched in November 2022, then we haven’t even reached its first year. What’s also clear is that Nvidia’s early advantages are not exclusive - there is too much money and momentum that will boost competitors. Nvidia knows it doesn’t have a monopoly on AI hardware and is working to fracture the market into controllable fragments with future focus on slow-to=move, slow-to-change and easy-to-control Enterprise IT market. AI hardware will iterate and this post considers whether Nvidia remains dominant and when it will collapse. - Greg

BackBox Introduces Network Vulnerability Manager - BackBox
BackBox, which provides network automation tools including config and OS backups, is adding network vulnerability management capabilities to its platform. BackBox says it ties together its device inventory manager with threat and security intelligence to help network engineers track, prioritize, and then fix vulnerable gear. It’s a logical addition to a product set that already targets network operations. The press release is linked above, and a blog about the new capability is here. And full disclosure–BackBox is a Packet Pushers sponsor, but this is not a sponsored engagement. I just thought it was interesting. - Drew

Starlink - Direct to Cell - Starlink
Starlink has a landing page providing early information about its direct satellite support for cellular handsets. While Starlink has a history of promising much and delivering very very late (and sometimes never) it remains well positioned to capture significant market share. The general theme from specialist analysts is there are many limitations and restrictions. For example it's unlikely to work in high density locations, and only when outdoors. The mobile carriers own the spectrum and will be selling it to their customers not Starlink. For narrow use cases, this might be highly desirable but will enough customers want to pay a premium for it? - Greg

Introducing the Project Argus Datacenter-ready Secure Control Module design specification - Cloudflare Blog
Cloudflare is partnering with Lenovo to design a board, separate from the main motherboard, to handle system-level security and remote management functions. Why? “[M]otherboards are increasingly optimized for high-speed signal bandwidth, and servers need to support specialized security requirements. This has made it necessary to decouple the BMC and its related components from the server motherboard, and move them to a smaller common form factor module known as the Datacenter Secure Control Module (DC-SCM).” The DC-SCM is part of the Open Compute Project as Project Argus. - Ethan

Cisco IOS XE Software Web UI Privilege Escalation Vulnerability - Cisco Security Advisory
We don’t report on too many security vulnerabilities since there’s a new one every hour, but this seems to be a big one. Read the details, especially if part of your standard is to enable “ip http server” or “ip http secure-server” on boxes that are facing the Internet or other untrusted networks. You’ve got a mitigation project ahead of you. - Ethan

Google opens Falcon, a reliable low-latency hardware transport, to the ecosystem - Google Cloud Blog
Falcon is about hardware to improve the usefulness of Ethernet in high performance computing and AI computing environments that demand ultra low latency and losslessness. What’s Falcon doing to improve stalwart Ethernet? “The lower layers of Falcon use three key insights to achieve low latency in high-bandwidth, yet lossy, Ethernet data center networks. Fine-grained hardware-assisted round-trip time (RTT) measurements with flexible, per-flow hardware-enforced traffic shaping, and fast and accurate packet retransmissions, are combined with multipath-capable and PSP-encrypted Falcon connections.” If the Falcon announcement reminds you of the recently announced efforts of the Ultra Ethernet Consortium, it should. Falcon might well have a role to play in the UEC’s vision. Falcon has been opened via the Open Compute Project. - Ethan

LAST LAUGH 😆

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