The Everything Feed - All Packet Pushers Pods

By Packet PushersTechnology

The Everything Feed - All Packet Pushers Pods episodes

November 26, 2015 PQ Show 66: Competency In The Enterprise
IT has been trained to operate equipment, but can they–and should they–learn the fundamentals that underpin the infrastructure? Does the enterprise have the skills, resources, and competency to handle the transition to the cloud?
These questions caused a passionate debate with Kelsey Hightower @kelseyhightower and Keith Townsend @ctoadvisor on whether enterprises have been able to:

* Retain the right people
* Build skills and knowledge
* Have enough staff
* Have good leadership

Without these human resources, an enterprise might outsource to a vendor or a reseller to get the advice and support they need. Hear what our debaters have to say, and tell us what we got wrong (and right) in the comments section.
0 min
November 20, 2015 PQ Show 65: IPv4 Broker Services
With IPv4 address space officially exhausted in ARIN’s region, we’ve moved into a market of IPv4 scarcity. If you want new publicly routable IPv4, you’ll have to get it from your ISP (what normally happens when you order a circuit), or from some other party willing to sell their address space to you.
To facilitate the transaction of IPv4 addresses between parties, many different IPv4 broker services have popped up. Is this a service your organization should take advantage of? Are there risks involved in IPv4 transactions like this?
John Curran, President and CEO of ARIN, joins us to help us understand the issues surrounding IPv4 broker services.
Show Notes:
– Level setting. What does it really means that ARIN is out of IPv4 address space to allocate?

* ARIN did not reserve any blocks, like some RIRs did.
* ARIN allocated the last of the IPv4 space for its region.
* This does not mean that service providers are out. In fact, this is where most end users are going to get IPv4 address space from.

– IPv6 is the future, but adoption remains slow in the United States. From ARIN’s point of view, what major obstacles remain in the way of full IPv6 adoption?
– A sort of gray market for IPv4 addresses has emerged now that all allocations are gone. In general, what is ARIN’s view of this market?
– Getting IPv4 address space from someone ARIN has allocated to isn’t as simple as buying the address block from them. ARIN is still involved. Please describe that involvement.
– Many different IPv4 brokers have sprung up to facilitate IPv4 transactions between buyers and sellers. Does ARIN govern this market or license brokers in any official capacity?
– What is ARIN’s advice to companies that are considering an IPv4 broker service?

* Things to look for in a broker
* Red flags

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November 12, 2015 PQ Show 64: OpenFlow TTPs Won’t Save Us with Rob Sherwood
On this Packet Pushers Priority Queue, we interview Rob Sherwood, CTO of Big Switch Networks, to gain an alternate view on OpenFlow TTPs (table type patterns). We first talked about TTPs in Weekly 220 in a discussion with Curt Beckmann back in January 2015. While Curt was fairly enthused that TTPs were going to move the ball forward, Rob is not convinced that TTPs are the long-term answer to make it easier for OpenFlow controllers and switches to share capabilities.
What We Discuss

* How OpenFlow is used by a switch to make decisions
* What tables are used by a switch to store actionable information impacting packet forwarding
* How TTPs describe these tables – the schemas that TTPs provide
* Why defining specific TTP schemas is short-changing hardware capabilities in some silicon, and might even result in sub-optimal performance in specific operations
* The emergence of P4 as a “language of constraints”
* Silicon manufacturers obfuscate details of their specific chips as a competitive advantage. That puts TTPs that describe switching capabilities generically at a disadvantage. Without knowing specifics, it’s probably not possible to write a TTP that will result in a chip being used optimally
* TTP is the best solution we have today. But perhaps not tomorrow

Links
Weekly 220: OpenFlow + Table Type Patterns with Curt Beckmann
Rob Sherwood on Twitter
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November 03, 2015 PQ Show 63: 6WIND Accelerates Hypervisor Networking: Sponsored
Purpose-built hardware appliances for routing, load balancing, firewalling and other network services are giving way to virtual instances designed to run on x86-based servers. This trend is broadly defined as network functions virtualization (NFV).
It’s part of the shift toward ‘software-defined’ environments where an orchestration system invokes a series of network functions to deliver a set of services to a consumer.
The trend is taking hold in part because x86-based machines are cheaper and easier to scale than specialized hardware appliances.
However, a challenge with hypervisor networking is performance. How do you get the throughput you need out of an x86 server when the tastiest hardware bits of the CPU core and NICs are abstracted away?
Today on Packet Pushers Priority Queue, we’re going to discuss the hypervisor performance bottleneck, some of the workarounds that exist today, and the commercial-grade virtual acceleration for hypervisor networking with our sponsor, 6WIND. Yann Rapaport, product manager at 6WIND, joins us for the discussion.
We’ll talk about the reasons why virtual switches struggle to fill physical pipes, walk through the packet flow through a hypervisor, and talk about packet processing in Linux. We’ll look at some of the efforts to address performance issues, including SR-IOV, and OVS with DPDK.
We also drill into 6WIND’s technology, including Virtual Accelerator, Turbo Router, and Turbo IPSec.
For more information about 6WIND, see the Packet Pushers blog 6WIND Offering Accelerated L3 Virtual Appliances.
Links:
Hardware Versus Software Switching – 6WIND Whitepaper
6WIND Turbo Router + 6WIND Virtual Accelerator vs. Linux Routing + Open vSwitch – 6WIND Video
6WIND Turbo IPsec + 6WIND Virtual Accelerator vs. Linux IPsec + Open vSwitch – 6WIND Video
Blazing performance with 6WIND Speed Series Turbo Appliances – SDX Central
6WIND Offering Accelerated L3 Virtual Appliances – Packet Pushers
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November 02, 2015 Network Break 60: Cisco’s Acquisitions, Verizon’s IoT Ambitions
Network Break analyzes Cisco's latest acquisitions, Verizon's IoT ambitions, Microsoft's failed bid for Mesosphere, a security bill that endangers privacy, and a new startup from an old NSA hand.
The post Network Break 60: Cisco’s Acquisitions, Verizon’s IoT Ambitions appeared first on Packet Pushers.
44 min
October 26, 2015 Network Break 59: Dell’s Vision, HP Folds Public Cloud, HTTPS Advances
Network Break analyzes Dell's acquisition strategy, examines HP's decision to shutter its public cloud offering and sell TippingPoint, discusses SolarWinds going private, celebrates a milestone for the Let's Encyrpt project, and more!
The post Network Break 59: Dell’s Vision, HP Folds Public Cloud, HTTPS Advances appeared first on Packet Pushers.
37 min
October 25, 2015 Field Engineering – A Garage Bar In Oregon
Field Engineering is an attempt to capture ad hoc conversations that occur in bars, lunch rooms, conferences and other industry events. Face-to-face, glass-to-glass and not much filtering. This first episode was recorded in a bar, for no particular reason other than to test out the idea.
This trial show was recorded with:
Matt Oswalt of KeepingItClassless.net @mierdin and well-known figure in the NetOps community.
Keith Townsend of TheCTOAdvisor.com @ctoadvisor – a reformed consultant and infrastructure architect.
We discuss a wide range of topics including:

The joys of bathrobes when working from home
Where “mierdin” comes from
The tribulations of travel when traveling from overseas
Finding a life/work balance at Packet Pushers
Matt turns the tables and starts to interview Greg about Packet Pushers and why we do some things
Why hardware matters in networking, Intel hardware for example
And the conversation starts to degrade about here as the beer takes effect
Complexity and Simplification
Much more

We would love to hear your feedback about this show. Depending on the response, we may record more of them in the future. Leave us comments so we can get back to you.
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August 01, 2015 Citizens of Tech 012 – Biofuel Pyramid Cables
We start with a discussion of jail time. Jail. Time. And…147 MPH. Yeah. Eric tells the story. And then we hop into our show.
Present
Doomception: How modders got Doom to run inside of Doom
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/07/doomception-how-modders-got-doom-to-run-inside-of-doom/
* Doom was open sourced in the 90’s. Folks have gone nuts porting it to all sorts of things.
* Now, you can run Doom inside of Doom. “OK, if we’re being technically accurate, this is actually Doom running inside GZDoom, a heavily modified Doom source port that was first released in 2005 to bring a slew of modern gaming features to the 1993 original. The author also warns that the in-game versions of Doom and Wolfenstein 3D available in the mod are only “semi-complete.” Still, the sheer amount of near-pointless effort and dedication needed to get GZDoom to run what is essentially a version of itself within itself is impressive (and kind of frightening).
* Action code script makes this possible. ”ACS was designed to allow modders to create more interactive environments through simple bytecodes that did things like open doors, play sounds, or move items and characters around in response to player actions. The basic bytecode-based language in that game was later extended in the ZDoom source port to allow for high-level programming features like named scripts, functions, arrays, and entire libraries. Those additions made their way into the later GZDoom as well.”
We tear apart a $340 audiophile Ethernet cable and look inside
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/07/ars-prepares-to-put-audiophile-ethernet-cables-to-the-test-in-las-vegas/
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/07/gallery-we-tear-apart-a-340-audiophile-ethernet-cable-and-look-inside/
* Audiophile people are special kind of crazy. Some are willing to spend exorbitant amounts of money to get tiny improvements that most of us (maybe none of us) could actually hear.
* Cables are a prime example of this madness. Maybe fancy cables made a difference in the analog world. But in a digital one? The ones and zeros make it, or they don’t.
* Ethernet cables are already manufactured and can be tested to be within a specific performance rating. For a twisted pair Ethernet cable to perform at a particular “category” level, specific pairs must be twisted a specific number of times per foot. Beyond that, the 4 twisted pairs must be then twisted around each other in certain category definitions, all to avoid crosstalk, electromagnetic interference, and errors. The shorter the cable, the less likely these issues are to be present. Even with errors, Ethernet can detect them, discarding the errant frame, and probably get a retransmission assuming an acknowledged data protocol like TCP is running over the Ethernet cable.
* So. What’s in a $340 “audiophile” Ethernet cable?
* “The cable itself is of reasonably high quality, with braided and foil shielding around the entire cable coupled with foil shielding around the individual twisted pair bundles.”
* “The plugs are high-quality Telegärtner MFP8s, which cost about 9 EUR each depending on where you get them.”
* “There’s every indication that the cables conform to the listed Category 7 specifications and,
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July 21, 2015 Show 246 – Design & Build #4 – Data Center Migration
Join us for a step-by-step discussion of what's involved in a data center migration, including new builds, cloud/hybrid options, power & cooling, team preparation and planning, and execution.
The post Show 246 – Design & Build #4 – Data Center Migration appeared first on Packet Pushers.
1 hr 37 min
July 11, 2015 Citizens of Tech 010 – Vinyl Glacier Robot Earthquakes
Stephen Hawking in A Brief History of Time writes,
“Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations. What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe? The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?”
If that question made you stop and go, “Hmm,” then you might find the Citizens of Tech podcast interesting. So pull up an earbud, and have a listen. I’m Ethan Banks, and joining me is Eric Sutphen. You can find us on Twitter @citizensoftech. This show is a part of the Packet Pushers podcast network. Citizens of Tech and other fine technology podcasts can be found at PacketPushers.net.
Our show is in three segments. We examine tech stories of the present, glance over our shoulder at the past, then peer towards the horizon at future tech we hope someday will become reality.
On today’s show recorded July 8th, 2015, we cover news from Amazon, review a cheap IP surveillance camera, dive deep on retina displays and how your eyeballs work, and do not discover extraterrestrial life. Also, robots duel, and glaciers cause earthquakes. Among other things! So let’s dive in with our first story…
Present
Amazon throws in $100 million, developer tools to open Echo’s Alexa ecosystem
http://www.zdnet.com/article/amazon-throws-100-million-developer-tools-to-open-echos-alexa-ecosystem/

* The software developer kit (SDK) is called the Alexa Skills Kit, which is a series of application programming interfaces that allow developers to create voice features for Alexa.
* Amazon said that it will open Alexa’s voice services up to third party hardware makers and they will allow hardware vendors to use the Alexa Voice Service for free.
* Echo is now available to the public, not just Prime subscribers

Cheap IP Surveillance Camera Review – Microseven

* http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00M5PHAYW
* Wide angle field of view
* ONVIF (onvif.org) – works with my Synology.

* “Driving IP-based physical security through standardization.”
* “ONVIF is an open industry forum for the development of a global standard for the interface of IP-based physical security products. ONVIF is committed to the adoption of IP in the security market. The ONVIF specification will ensure interoperability between products regardless of manufacturer.”
* “The cornerstones of ONVIF are:

* Standardization of communication between IP-based physical security
* Interoperability between IP-based physical security products regardless of manufacturer
* Open to all companies and organizations”

* “The ONVIF specification defines a common protocol for the exchange of information between network video devices including automatic device discovery, video streaming and intelligence metadata.”

* PoE
* IP66

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_Code
* Ingress Protection Marking
* First number – solid particle protection
* Second number – liquid ingress protection
* The first “6” = dust tight. There is no higher number.
* The second “6” = powerful water jets.

* 1280×960
* Companion software

It’s on: Team Japan accepts US challenge to a giant robot duel
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