Packet Pushers - Priority Queue

Today, an update on some compelling projects at IETF 102. Ours guest are Jeff Tantsura and Russ White.

We review the following projects to see what’s new and understand what problems they’re solving:

* RIFT (Routing In Fat Trees)

* BIER (Bit Indexed Explicit Replication)

* PPR (Preferred Path Routing)

* YANG data modeling

We also look at the state of SD-WAN, which is a bit of the Wild West, to look at standards and interoperability efforts underway.

Jeff is the Head of Technology Strategy at Nuage Networks. He’s also deeply involved with the IETF as the Chair of Routing Area Working Group, the Chair of Routing In Fat Trees, a Member of Internet Architecture Board, and a Member of IP Stack Evolution.

Jeff has recorded with us several times before, most recently on Priority Queue 126, where Greg chatted with Jeff about the future of data center fabrics. Jeff, welcome back to Packet Pushers.

Russ White is a network architect, author, and blogger. Rush also chairs the Interface to Routing System and the Babel routing protocol efforts at the IETF, and is a reviewer in the IETF’s Routing Area Directorate.

Show Links:

Jeff Tantsura IETF work – IETF

Russ White’s IETF work – IETF

RIFT NANOG presentation – NANOG via YouTube

RIFT Working Group – IETF

BIER Working Group – IETF

Preferred Path Routing (PPR) drafts – IETF

SD-WAN service model draft – IETF

YANG Explorer – Cisco DevNet

Priority Queue 126 – The Future of Data Center Fabrics from IETF 99 – Packet Pushers

Rule11.tech – Russ White’s blog

Computer Networking Problems and Solutions: An innovative approach to building resilient, modern networks – Russ White and Ethan Banks

Today on the Packet Pushers Priority Queue, we get nerdy about disaggregation, where you mix and match software from one vendor and hardware from another.

Our sponsor today is Cisco, and if you just did a double-take, that’s right, Cisco wants to talk to you about disaggregation, but there’s more to it than just hardware/software separation.

Joining us are Bhavna Prasad, Product Manager at Cisco; and Akshat Sharma, Technical Marketing Engineer for Cisco’s Service Provider BU.

We discuss the different kinds or degrees of disaggregation, and then drill into specifics around IOS-XR.

We also look at the programmatic capabilities and interfaces of IOS-XR, what hardware it’s available on, use cases, and more.

Show Links:

@XRDOCS – Cisco Systems

XRDOCS on Twitter

Akshat Sharma on Twitter

We discuss networking for hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) and how Big Switch's Big Cloud Fabric can help on today's sponsored Priority Queue podcast.

In January 2018, the WiFi Alliance announced that WPA3 was coming this year, a collection of security enhancements to address issues with WPA2.

Today, we discuss WPA3 with Dan Harkins, a scientist at Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company. Dan has been closely involved with WPA3’s development, and I heard Dan present on his work at Aruba Atmosphere 2018 in March of this year.

Dan was kind enough to join us today for a preview of what’s coming, with a special focus on one aspect of WPA3 that interests me personally, Opportunistic Wireless Encryption (OWE).

We also discuss the fixes that WPA3 makes to WPA2, and when we can anticipate product support.

Sponsor: Paessler AG

Paessler AG is the maker of PRTG Network Monitor. PRTG monitors your whole IT infrastructure 24/7 and alerts you to problems before users even notice. Find out more about the monitoring software that helps system administrators work smarter, faster, better. Visit paessler.com today.

Show Links:

Wi-Fi Alliance® introduces security enhancements – Wi-Fi Alliance

Opportunistic Wireless Encryption (RFC 8110) – IETF

Dragonfly Key Exchange (RFC 7664) – IETF

Today on Priority Queue, the Packet Pushers peer into the darker corners of network monitoring.

Monitoring gets you visibility. But when you can see what’s happening, you might not like what you find. That’s the topic of today’s sponsored show with Paessler AG, maker of PRTG network monitoring software.

Our guests are Greg Ross, Presales Systems Engineer at Paessler; and Troy Mursch, a security researcher who blogs at Bad Packets Report.

Troy discovered that cryptojacking malware called Coinhive had infected a popular Website. We’ll talk about how he used Paessler sensors to monitor the malware on the site, and to track down other infected systems.

We talk with Troy and Greg about how to use Paessler to monitor key metrics that could indicate malware. We also dig into Paessler’s capabilities for more typical network monitoring use cases.

And here’s a special offer for Packet Pushers listeners: Paessler is offering a free network security eBook. You can get it at go.paessler.com/packetpushers.

You can also get a free trail of PRTG here.

Show Links:

Free Network Security eBook – Paessler

Paessler PRTG Free Trial

Paessler on Twitter

Troy Mursch/Bad Packets Report on Twitter

Who and What Is Coinhive? – Krebs On Security

Bad Packets Report – Troy Mursch

On this episode of Priority Queue, which is sponsored today by Cisco, we tackle the General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR.

This new regulation lays out data privacy and protection obligations for organizations that handle data of EU citizens, including loss prevention, breach notification requirements, and serious fines and penalties for violations.

We delve into GDPR requirements with Equilibrium Security and IGXGlobal, an ePlus Technology Company, two Cisco partners who share practical insight and advice for dealing with GDPR.

Our guests are Anish Chauhan, Director at Equilibrium Security; and Alex Goldstein, Security Architect at IGXGlobal, an ePlus Technology Company.

We’ll discuss how to break down and understand requirements, the importance of a risk assessment and gap analysis, and how to use security and management tools to comply with the regulations.

Show Links:

General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) – Cisco

Equilibrium Cyber Security Services

Equilibrium on Twitter

Equilibrium Cyber Security Podcasts – Equilibrium

IGXGlobal Security Online Visibility Assessment

2017 DBIR: Understand Your Cybersecurity Threats – Verizon Enterprise Solutions

Cisco Encrypted Traffic Analytics – Cisco

Today on the Priority Queue, some practical Python for network engineers.

My guest is Billy Downing, and we walk through an example of how to use Python to deploy BFD, or Bidirectional Forwarding Detection.

We start by describing BFD and how it works, and then explore how to use Python to make it go in your network.

Billy is a data center engineer who works for the Department of Defense. Check out his blog at NetworkTechStudy.com.

Show Links:

NetworkTechStudy.com – Billy Downing’s blog

Learning Python from a Network Engineer’s Perspective – NetworkTechStudy.com

Bidirectional Forwarding Detection (BFD) – IETF

In the ten or so years I’ve been blogging, Ivan Pepelnjak has been constant figure in the tech industry. His prolific blogging and sharing of knowledge is one of the inspirations for my own entry into blogging. Over the years, we have usually agreed violently on most things and disagreed on others.

His ipSpace website has grown from a blog into a membership and more recently into a consulting service.

On today’s Priority Queue, Ivan and I talk about automation, intent, product quality and what can be done to improve it, the direction private clouds might take, and whatever else catches our fancy.

Sponsor: Paessler AG

Paessler AG is the maker of PRTG Network Monitor. PRTG monitors your whole IT infrastructure 24/7 and alerts you to problems before users even notice. Find out more about the monitoring software that helps system administrators work smarter, faster, better. Visit paessler.com today.

Show Links:

IPSpace.net

Blog.ipspace.net

Ivan Pepelnjak on Twitter

Today on the Priority Queue we have a roundtable show. We’ve gathered a few engineers around the microphone to talk about their experiences and what’s on their minds.

We often hear this format is an audience favorite, so we plan to record more of these in the Priority Queue and Weekly channels, so keep an eye out.

Today we welcome Alex Clipper, Eric Gullickson, Matt Elliott, and Stafford Rau to the podcast. We discuss encryption, code styles to ensure that code written by networkers is up to snuff, and what it’s like to work in technology after a certain age.

Sponsor: Paessler AG

Paessler AG is the maker of PRTG Network Monitor. PRTG monitors your entire IT infrastructure 24/7 and alerts you to problems before users notice. Find out more about the monitoring software that helps system administrators work smarter, faster, better by visiting paessler.com today.

Show Links:

Understanding Media Access Control Security (MACsec) – Technical Documentation – Support – Juniper Networks

Layer 2-Encryptors For Metro And Carrier Ethernet WANs And MANs – Inside-IT (PDF)

Thales L2 Encryption – Thales

Senetas – Senetas.com

What Is Optical Encryption? – Ciena

Certes Networks

Google Style Guides – GitHub

Python PEP 8 Style Guide – Python.org

PEP 8 — The Style Guide for Python Code – PEP8.org

Online PEP 8 Compliance Checker – PEP8 Online.com

Sublime Text Editor – Sublimetext.com

Atom.io Text Editor – Atom.io

VSCode – VisualStudio.com

Cutting ‘Old Heads’ at IBM – Pro Publica

Go Past The Resume,

I spent a few weeks in Silicon Valley recently, and Martin Casado generously agreed to record a conversation with me. Martin is a general partner at VC firm Andreessen Horowitz. He previously worked at VMware and was cofounder of Nicira, which VMware acquired in 2012 for $1.2 billion.

I wanted to dig deeper into the business concepts behind product/market fit and the differences in how big vendors and startups come to market. Not everyone thinks about how business drives what you buy.

Apology: There is some bad audio for the first 5 minutes or so. I was using someone else’s equipment and I forgot to double check. The audio clears up about 5 minutes in if you want to skip ahead.

Here are the topics we cover in this wide-ranging discussion, based in part on a post Martin wrote:

1. Getting stuck in the “innovation-friend zone”

2. Even when customers are “sold”, they still can’t buy

3. Your biggest competition isn’t another company… it’s the status quo (or is it?)

4. Is money leaving Enterprise IT because the market is shrinking?

5. Are we seeing the death of Enterprise IT brands?

6. Is the intent-based networking movement legit? How does it work out?

Also, a wasp briefly interrupts the conversation before meeting a swift end.

Link: “Need More Time” or Lack of Product-Market Fit? Guideposts for Tech Founders Going to Market When No Market Exists – Andreessen Horowitz