vendor news if you don’t build your - packet pushers · the road to http/2 looks smooth google...
TRANSCRIPT
Human Infrastructure is a bishyweekly magazineshystyle newsletter fromEtherealMindcom with News Views and Opinions on being a humanin IT Infrastructure Hit the signup pageto subscribe and join 5013subscribers
View this email in your browser
Issue Number 3 02232015
Vendor NewsGartner Catches UpThe Road to HTTP2Looks SmoothCisco Has YetAnother SDNStrategyOwning MicrosoftWindowsInfographic Effort toMake MulticastWork Testing a NewPodcastInternets of InterestMoving Away FromEvershyInsecureAdobe Flash playerIf Carpenters WereProgrammersBoycott DockerHP Gloats AboutCisco ONELicensing
If you donrsquot build yourdream someone else willhire you to help them buildtheirs shy Dhirubhai Ambani
US and UK SpyAgencies Stole theCrypto Keys to SIMCards
Why is the Quality of IT InfrastructureProducts So Poor In the last few weeks Apple announced record quarter shipping nearly 79million iPhones While this is an amazing example of design manufacturingand business execution the most impressive aspect is the lack of technicalservices needed to support the iPhone
The iPhone gets used in the worst possible conditions for technologyPhysically a mobile phone is used varying environmental conditions shy indoorsand outdoors hot and dry to wet and cold The software is developed bythousands of independent developers large and small using a toolchainprovided Apple Compare this with the fullshystack products provided byincumbent IT suppliers to Enterprise IT Our data centres are carefullycontrolled and managed yet reliability is a constant concern The desktops amplaptops we put into the hands of coshyworkers require constant maintenanceand tools to keep them safe and reliable
Apple Macbook computers also have a good record Irsquove never heard of Applerecruiting armies of small businesses to sell and support Mac to smallbusiness They donrsquot run costly reseller programs that put a middle man in
the transaction because the customers need advice They have structuredtheir products so that support is minimal
We use software platforms from large corporations like Microsoft Oracle andCisco and applications developed by thousands of small and large companiesaround the world Theoretically these companies should produce productswith the same quality and user experience that Apple produces in theiriPhones and Macbooks In practice we simply donrsquot get the anywhere nearthe same quality
Enterprise IT is More Complex
When I raise this issue with employees of big companies they splutter andcomplain ldquoIts not simple to make these productsrdquo ldquothe testing is very hardrdquoand that Enterprise IT is more complex that I can understand
But this argument doesnrsquot hold water An smartphone is a highly complexdevice that is part of the a highly complex set of interactions with the 3G 4Gand wireless networks The current generation of applications are as complexas any enterprise software solution
Increasingly Enterprise looks foolish when costly corporate desktops have lessreliability that an iPhone After the Sony Pictures hack staff were usingtheir smartphones to run the business Not a long term solution but akey point to notice
Canrsquot See the Change
Once upon a time I believed that my laptop needed several things
Windows OS needed patching at least once a month
Hardware replacement every nine months
Expect at least one maybe two hardware failures in those nine monthsfrom cracked case faulty keyboard to total HDD failure (and data loss)
reinstall OS to blank formatted HDD install Apps restore data and resetall defaults once or twice a year
Since I moved to Apple MAC hardware and software about five years ago Irsquovenot had a single hardware failure Irsquom on my third laptop never had toreinstall the OS and every upgrade allowed me to carry my settings and dataforward All of the things that seemed so necessary when I was using MSWindows XP are just a waste of my life time
What I want1 I want the confidence to say that it is highly unlikely that I will hit abug I accept that bugs are inevitable but they SHOULD BE anexceptional event not something that we plan and budget for Can youbelieve that we actually expect bugs to be in the products that we buy And we run tests to see if we can find them
2 None of us should pay for buggy software Customers should getrefunds or rewards to find bugs There are no incentives for vendors tomake their products reliable In fact we pay extra to get the bugs fixedin the form a service contracts
3 We should not pay maintenance to fix a defective product the vendorshould make good on the promise of quality software amp hardware Itshould work as documented or promised
4 Donrsquot accept second best Lodge complaints with your account manager(if there are any left) or some other means Blog about your bugs andyour experiences in getting them fixed
Best in Class Technical Support
If a product is really good it would not require technical support Cisco isparticularly proud of its Technical Assistance Centre and receives high ratingsfor providing excellent customer support Other successful vendors have wellrun heavily funded and costly support operations that I use to report bugsand product failures
The majority of those bugs should never have shipped or been found duringwell run testing I canrsquot help but wonder if postshysales technical support getmore funding that product testing and quality control
Apple makes their business successful and even more profitable by notneeding technical support Why canrsquot Enterprise IT vendors do the same
You can help me be successful by telling your friends and colleagues by forwardingthem this email They can head over to signup page for the list(URL httpeepurlcomJrXA5 )
Vendor News
Selection on news from vendors that might be worth looking at Looking for unusualexciting weird or amazing without the hoshyhum
Gartner Catches Up
The historians over at Gartner have released a report for people who havemore money than skills on Fixed Form Factor Switching in the DataCenter high that the Ethernet Chassis switches are no longer mandatory inthe data centre
I havenrsquot read the report but the highlight is that ECMP network designsreplaces the need for chassis switches
I say ldquohistoriansrdquo because here is my article from April 2011highlighting the same issue in quite a bit of detail Musing How many10Gigabit Ethernet Ports do you really need shy EtherealMind It has been obvious for quite some time that your data centre doesnrsquot needchassis switches because you donrsquot needs dozens of access switches whenusing 10GbE In fact most data centres barely need more than a handful of1RU format switches maybe a dozen at most including the backbonecore I dont like chassis because of the their complexity when upgrading them Itsmuch easier more reliable and far more predicable to simply replace 1RUswitches than to replace a line card in a chassis
The Road to HTTP2 Looks Smooth
Google has announced support for HTTP2 in Chrome and depreciation ofSPDY and
HTTP is the fundamental networking protocol that powers the webThe majority of sites use version 11 of HTTP which was definedin 1999 with RFC2616 A lot has changed on the web since thenand a new version of the protocol named HTTP2 is well on theroad to standardization We plan to gradually roll out support forHTTP2 in Chrome 40 in the upcoming weeks
Chromium Blog Hello HTTP2 Goodbye SPDY
Cisco Has Yet Another SDN Strategy
If you arenrsquot tired of hearing about SDN from Cisco then its time to startlooking at yet another SDN product from Cisco This time the Nexus 9000products have had a new version of software that uses EVPN (BGP) topropagate VXLAN path information over an ECMP backbone This appears to
be significantly different from the ACI method for the distributed control planethat Cisco uses
Cisco Border Gateway Protocol Control Plane for Virtual ExtensibleLAN shy Cisco
Confused Yeah me too I will try to spend some time looking into this butIrsquom tired of learning each different Cisco SDN strategy before they release yetanother one This makes six I think and it is no longer clear which strategyCisco will eventually pick at the winner ACI doesnrsquot seem to be doing all thatwell if they continue to release competing strategies
Maybe Irsquom missing something and I will work it out in a few weeks
No sponsor this week
Want to reach 5013 of the finest networking professionals in the world Email
packetpushersgmailcom for more details
My personal views on changes in the market or technology on topics issues or technology that I amactively working on or researching All original content that I will write for the magazine
Owning Microsoft WindowsI had a reason to run MS Windows this week and opened myDesktop virtualization tool to spin up my Windows XP instance While I waswaiting for the updates (took over an hour for 4 reboots and updates) Ithought I might buy the latest version and checked out Amazon I got quite a shock
Am I going to pay pound150 for a copy of MS Windows to run on my Mac
Do I really want to pay pound150 for a Windows to run on my laptop I have aWindows Office 365 subscription that gives me MS Office licenses for thefamily since I occasionally use MS Office to decode the proprietary format of
documents from other people so I dont need office No I dont In the end I found a way to work around this and I still dontneed to use Windows MS Windows is not worth pound150 to me when Apple isgiving me the same thing for much lower price And Linux is free
Infographic Effort to Make MulticastWork Because infographics are all the rage right now I figure I should do some too
Testing a New Podcast
As part of researching and preparing for Packet Pushers Ethan and I receivebriefing from vendors on their technology for several hours a weekGenerally we donrsquot have time to write up every briefing because of the timeit takes lacks relevance or may be a smaller point in the overall industrytimeline But we spend time discussing why what and how of what eachvendors is doing
This week Ethan and I decided to trial a podcast on the discussion Wepublished Community Show ndash Gregrsquos amp Ethanrsquos Briefing Review forFebruary 2015 We will record a few shows in the coming weeks and decideif this worth discussing into the future
You can subscribe to Community Channel in iTunes specifically on iTunesor with RSS httppacketpushersnetcategorypodcastshypostcommunityshypodcast
Internets of Interest
Collection of useful relevant or just fun places on the Internet and a bit commentary about what Ive
found interesting about them
Moving Away From EvershyInsecure Adobe Flashplayer
Googlersquos Youtube finally moves away from using Adobe Flash as the defaultmedia player For network engineers this means that blocking access toonline video got more complicated because HTML5 video streams over HTTPand previous methods of block the Streaming Video on 1975 will no longerwork But security professionals who know that the Flash player has a majorsource of exploits and vulnerabilities will be pleased Companies who useFlash super cookies to track users will still be able to use HTML5 to do thesame thing
Of course you can upgrade to a ldquoNext Generation Firewallrdquo that is able toperform deeper inspection into the HTTP stream but encryption is becomingmore common which prevents inspection An article for another day
YouTube Engineering and Developers Blog YouTube now defaults toHTML5
If Carpenters Were Programmers
On the pointless nature of technology interviews who want people withexperience on the latest hot technology
Interviewer But yoursquore not a walnut guru
Carpenter Well Irsquom a carpenter so Irsquove worked with all kinds ofwood you know and there are some differences but I think ifyoursquore a good carpenter
jasonbocknet
Boycott Docker
Docker is a good idea but there is plenty wrong with the technology Forexample the existing networking connectivity is basically NAT to eachcontainer using the Linux Bridge and there is a total lack of isolation and poorperformance Its AWFUL
This article expands to compare with VMs and integration Written with apassionate nix slant its still a good roundup from reasons why you donrsquotwant Docker There isnt enough criticism of Docker IMHO
boycott docker
HP Gloats About Cisco ONE Licensing
Cisco announced long overdue changes to its complex incoherent and costlylicensing schemes across the many different businesses For the last 5 yearseach business unit inside the Cisco conglomerate structure has been usingsoftware licensing as means to increase revenue and profits but there is nocoherent plan Each division has different ideas about what should included orexcluded Increasingly I have found it takes more and more research time todecide which licenses are needed for a given task
HP Competitive has never been subtle and they are taking the opportunity togloat about HP Networks much simpler and easier to live with strategy
At the same time Cisco is trying to dress this up as innovation ormarket leadership Itrsquos not Even with this revamp Cisco still lagsa long way behind HPrsquos licensing models which are simple andstraightforward and have been since Day 1 We donrsquot push youinto purchasing ldquosuitesrdquo with secondshyclass feature sets that youmay or may not want and didnrsquot ask for When you buy our
hardware we donrsquot tell you ldquoall the powerrsquos there but you canrsquotuse it unless you pay us extrardquo We say ldquohere you go enjoy takefull value from our productrdquo Wersquove never believed in nickelshyandshydiming
Cisco isnrsquot the only company that can be aggressive when selling it productand HP is making an attempt here What do you think HP Blogs shy Cisco tries to ease Ciscoshycreated customer pain po shy TheHP Blog Hub
US and UK Spy Agencies Stole the Crypto Keys toSIM Cards
The Intercept reports that spy agencies have stolen the root certificates forSIM cards and can transparently gather data from any smartphone
The privacy of all mobile communications mdash voice calls textmessages and Internet access mdash depends on an encryptedconnection between the cellphone and the wireless carrierrsquosnetwork using keys stored on the SIM a tiny chip smaller than apostage stamp which is inserted into the phone All mobilecommunications on the phone depend on the SIM which storesand guards the encryption keys created by companies likeGemalto SIM cards can be used to store contacts text messagesand other important data like onersquos phone number
Additionally the spy agency targeted unnamed cellular companiesrsquocore networks giving it access to ldquosales staff machines forcustomer information and network engineers machines fornetwork mapsrdquo GCHQ also claimed the ability to manipulate thebilling servers of cell companies to ldquosuppressrdquo charges in an effortto conceal the spy agencyrsquos secret actions against an individualrsquosphone Most significantly GCHQ also penetrated ldquoauthenticationserversrdquo allowing it to decrypt data and voice communications
between a targeted individualrsquos phone and his or her telecomproviderrsquos network A note accompanying the slide asserted thatthe spy agency was ldquovery happy with the data so far and [was]working through the vast quantity of productrdquo
The Great SIM Heist How Spies Stole the Keys to the EncryptionCastle
I welcome your feedback questions and corrections Send an email tohumaninfrastructurepacketpushersnet and I will write a response
Sponsorship and Advertising shy Send an email to humaninfrastructurepacketpushersnet for moreinformation About Piece of A Human Infrastructure A strongly curated newsletter produced by Greg Ferro that contain observations and thoughts on ITInfrastructure with a networking focus that he has seen done discussed reviewed or just simply found on theInternet The format is structured but flexible (like any magazine) and will change over time as I settle into a routine ofcapturing ideas topics that seem relevant and ultimately finding patterns that seem to be interesting to youYour feedback will drives changes so dont hesitate to email with feedback or ask followup questions for thenext edition About Greg Ferro Greg is a coshyhost of the Packet Pushers Podcast a weekly podcast on Data Networking which has over 8000subscribers He blogs regularly at EtherealMindcom for the last eight years and is pretty well known thesedays He also write as an analyst for Network Computing and Gigaom Research He speaks at major events onData Centre Design SDN and life in technology He moderates panels advises customers and technologycompanies He works as a partshytime network engineer in the UK on a freelance basis Because real work configuringrouters and switches remain not only a passion but important to keeping touch with the industry Copyright copy 2015 Packet Pushers Interactive LLC All rights reserved unsubscribe from this list update subscription preferences
US and UK SpyAgencies Stole theCrypto Keys to SIMCards
Why is the Quality of IT InfrastructureProducts So Poor In the last few weeks Apple announced record quarter shipping nearly 79million iPhones While this is an amazing example of design manufacturingand business execution the most impressive aspect is the lack of technicalservices needed to support the iPhone
The iPhone gets used in the worst possible conditions for technologyPhysically a mobile phone is used varying environmental conditions shy indoorsand outdoors hot and dry to wet and cold The software is developed bythousands of independent developers large and small using a toolchainprovided Apple Compare this with the fullshystack products provided byincumbent IT suppliers to Enterprise IT Our data centres are carefullycontrolled and managed yet reliability is a constant concern The desktops amplaptops we put into the hands of coshyworkers require constant maintenanceand tools to keep them safe and reliable
Apple Macbook computers also have a good record Irsquove never heard of Applerecruiting armies of small businesses to sell and support Mac to smallbusiness They donrsquot run costly reseller programs that put a middle man in
the transaction because the customers need advice They have structuredtheir products so that support is minimal
We use software platforms from large corporations like Microsoft Oracle andCisco and applications developed by thousands of small and large companiesaround the world Theoretically these companies should produce productswith the same quality and user experience that Apple produces in theiriPhones and Macbooks In practice we simply donrsquot get the anywhere nearthe same quality
Enterprise IT is More Complex
When I raise this issue with employees of big companies they splutter andcomplain ldquoIts not simple to make these productsrdquo ldquothe testing is very hardrdquoand that Enterprise IT is more complex that I can understand
But this argument doesnrsquot hold water An smartphone is a highly complexdevice that is part of the a highly complex set of interactions with the 3G 4Gand wireless networks The current generation of applications are as complexas any enterprise software solution
Increasingly Enterprise looks foolish when costly corporate desktops have lessreliability that an iPhone After the Sony Pictures hack staff were usingtheir smartphones to run the business Not a long term solution but akey point to notice
Canrsquot See the Change
Once upon a time I believed that my laptop needed several things
Windows OS needed patching at least once a month
Hardware replacement every nine months
Expect at least one maybe two hardware failures in those nine monthsfrom cracked case faulty keyboard to total HDD failure (and data loss)
reinstall OS to blank formatted HDD install Apps restore data and resetall defaults once or twice a year
Since I moved to Apple MAC hardware and software about five years ago Irsquovenot had a single hardware failure Irsquom on my third laptop never had toreinstall the OS and every upgrade allowed me to carry my settings and dataforward All of the things that seemed so necessary when I was using MSWindows XP are just a waste of my life time
What I want1 I want the confidence to say that it is highly unlikely that I will hit abug I accept that bugs are inevitable but they SHOULD BE anexceptional event not something that we plan and budget for Can youbelieve that we actually expect bugs to be in the products that we buy And we run tests to see if we can find them
2 None of us should pay for buggy software Customers should getrefunds or rewards to find bugs There are no incentives for vendors tomake their products reliable In fact we pay extra to get the bugs fixedin the form a service contracts
3 We should not pay maintenance to fix a defective product the vendorshould make good on the promise of quality software amp hardware Itshould work as documented or promised
4 Donrsquot accept second best Lodge complaints with your account manager(if there are any left) or some other means Blog about your bugs andyour experiences in getting them fixed
Best in Class Technical Support
If a product is really good it would not require technical support Cisco isparticularly proud of its Technical Assistance Centre and receives high ratingsfor providing excellent customer support Other successful vendors have wellrun heavily funded and costly support operations that I use to report bugsand product failures
The majority of those bugs should never have shipped or been found duringwell run testing I canrsquot help but wonder if postshysales technical support getmore funding that product testing and quality control
Apple makes their business successful and even more profitable by notneeding technical support Why canrsquot Enterprise IT vendors do the same
You can help me be successful by telling your friends and colleagues by forwardingthem this email They can head over to signup page for the list(URL httpeepurlcomJrXA5 )
Vendor News
Selection on news from vendors that might be worth looking at Looking for unusualexciting weird or amazing without the hoshyhum
Gartner Catches Up
The historians over at Gartner have released a report for people who havemore money than skills on Fixed Form Factor Switching in the DataCenter high that the Ethernet Chassis switches are no longer mandatory inthe data centre
I havenrsquot read the report but the highlight is that ECMP network designsreplaces the need for chassis switches
I say ldquohistoriansrdquo because here is my article from April 2011highlighting the same issue in quite a bit of detail Musing How many10Gigabit Ethernet Ports do you really need shy EtherealMind It has been obvious for quite some time that your data centre doesnrsquot needchassis switches because you donrsquot needs dozens of access switches whenusing 10GbE In fact most data centres barely need more than a handful of1RU format switches maybe a dozen at most including the backbonecore I dont like chassis because of the their complexity when upgrading them Itsmuch easier more reliable and far more predicable to simply replace 1RUswitches than to replace a line card in a chassis
The Road to HTTP2 Looks Smooth
Google has announced support for HTTP2 in Chrome and depreciation ofSPDY and
HTTP is the fundamental networking protocol that powers the webThe majority of sites use version 11 of HTTP which was definedin 1999 with RFC2616 A lot has changed on the web since thenand a new version of the protocol named HTTP2 is well on theroad to standardization We plan to gradually roll out support forHTTP2 in Chrome 40 in the upcoming weeks
Chromium Blog Hello HTTP2 Goodbye SPDY
Cisco Has Yet Another SDN Strategy
If you arenrsquot tired of hearing about SDN from Cisco then its time to startlooking at yet another SDN product from Cisco This time the Nexus 9000products have had a new version of software that uses EVPN (BGP) topropagate VXLAN path information over an ECMP backbone This appears to
be significantly different from the ACI method for the distributed control planethat Cisco uses
Cisco Border Gateway Protocol Control Plane for Virtual ExtensibleLAN shy Cisco
Confused Yeah me too I will try to spend some time looking into this butIrsquom tired of learning each different Cisco SDN strategy before they release yetanother one This makes six I think and it is no longer clear which strategyCisco will eventually pick at the winner ACI doesnrsquot seem to be doing all thatwell if they continue to release competing strategies
Maybe Irsquom missing something and I will work it out in a few weeks
No sponsor this week
Want to reach 5013 of the finest networking professionals in the world Email
packetpushersgmailcom for more details
My personal views on changes in the market or technology on topics issues or technology that I amactively working on or researching All original content that I will write for the magazine
Owning Microsoft WindowsI had a reason to run MS Windows this week and opened myDesktop virtualization tool to spin up my Windows XP instance While I waswaiting for the updates (took over an hour for 4 reboots and updates) Ithought I might buy the latest version and checked out Amazon I got quite a shock
Am I going to pay pound150 for a copy of MS Windows to run on my Mac
Do I really want to pay pound150 for a Windows to run on my laptop I have aWindows Office 365 subscription that gives me MS Office licenses for thefamily since I occasionally use MS Office to decode the proprietary format of
documents from other people so I dont need office No I dont In the end I found a way to work around this and I still dontneed to use Windows MS Windows is not worth pound150 to me when Apple isgiving me the same thing for much lower price And Linux is free
Infographic Effort to Make MulticastWork Because infographics are all the rage right now I figure I should do some too
Testing a New Podcast
As part of researching and preparing for Packet Pushers Ethan and I receivebriefing from vendors on their technology for several hours a weekGenerally we donrsquot have time to write up every briefing because of the timeit takes lacks relevance or may be a smaller point in the overall industrytimeline But we spend time discussing why what and how of what eachvendors is doing
This week Ethan and I decided to trial a podcast on the discussion Wepublished Community Show ndash Gregrsquos amp Ethanrsquos Briefing Review forFebruary 2015 We will record a few shows in the coming weeks and decideif this worth discussing into the future
You can subscribe to Community Channel in iTunes specifically on iTunesor with RSS httppacketpushersnetcategorypodcastshypostcommunityshypodcast
Internets of Interest
Collection of useful relevant or just fun places on the Internet and a bit commentary about what Ive
found interesting about them
Moving Away From EvershyInsecure Adobe Flashplayer
Googlersquos Youtube finally moves away from using Adobe Flash as the defaultmedia player For network engineers this means that blocking access toonline video got more complicated because HTML5 video streams over HTTPand previous methods of block the Streaming Video on 1975 will no longerwork But security professionals who know that the Flash player has a majorsource of exploits and vulnerabilities will be pleased Companies who useFlash super cookies to track users will still be able to use HTML5 to do thesame thing
Of course you can upgrade to a ldquoNext Generation Firewallrdquo that is able toperform deeper inspection into the HTTP stream but encryption is becomingmore common which prevents inspection An article for another day
YouTube Engineering and Developers Blog YouTube now defaults toHTML5
If Carpenters Were Programmers
On the pointless nature of technology interviews who want people withexperience on the latest hot technology
Interviewer But yoursquore not a walnut guru
Carpenter Well Irsquom a carpenter so Irsquove worked with all kinds ofwood you know and there are some differences but I think ifyoursquore a good carpenter
jasonbocknet
Boycott Docker
Docker is a good idea but there is plenty wrong with the technology Forexample the existing networking connectivity is basically NAT to eachcontainer using the Linux Bridge and there is a total lack of isolation and poorperformance Its AWFUL
This article expands to compare with VMs and integration Written with apassionate nix slant its still a good roundup from reasons why you donrsquotwant Docker There isnt enough criticism of Docker IMHO
boycott docker
HP Gloats About Cisco ONE Licensing
Cisco announced long overdue changes to its complex incoherent and costlylicensing schemes across the many different businesses For the last 5 yearseach business unit inside the Cisco conglomerate structure has been usingsoftware licensing as means to increase revenue and profits but there is nocoherent plan Each division has different ideas about what should included orexcluded Increasingly I have found it takes more and more research time todecide which licenses are needed for a given task
HP Competitive has never been subtle and they are taking the opportunity togloat about HP Networks much simpler and easier to live with strategy
At the same time Cisco is trying to dress this up as innovation ormarket leadership Itrsquos not Even with this revamp Cisco still lagsa long way behind HPrsquos licensing models which are simple andstraightforward and have been since Day 1 We donrsquot push youinto purchasing ldquosuitesrdquo with secondshyclass feature sets that youmay or may not want and didnrsquot ask for When you buy our
hardware we donrsquot tell you ldquoall the powerrsquos there but you canrsquotuse it unless you pay us extrardquo We say ldquohere you go enjoy takefull value from our productrdquo Wersquove never believed in nickelshyandshydiming
Cisco isnrsquot the only company that can be aggressive when selling it productand HP is making an attempt here What do you think HP Blogs shy Cisco tries to ease Ciscoshycreated customer pain po shy TheHP Blog Hub
US and UK Spy Agencies Stole the Crypto Keys toSIM Cards
The Intercept reports that spy agencies have stolen the root certificates forSIM cards and can transparently gather data from any smartphone
The privacy of all mobile communications mdash voice calls textmessages and Internet access mdash depends on an encryptedconnection between the cellphone and the wireless carrierrsquosnetwork using keys stored on the SIM a tiny chip smaller than apostage stamp which is inserted into the phone All mobilecommunications on the phone depend on the SIM which storesand guards the encryption keys created by companies likeGemalto SIM cards can be used to store contacts text messagesand other important data like onersquos phone number
Additionally the spy agency targeted unnamed cellular companiesrsquocore networks giving it access to ldquosales staff machines forcustomer information and network engineers machines fornetwork mapsrdquo GCHQ also claimed the ability to manipulate thebilling servers of cell companies to ldquosuppressrdquo charges in an effortto conceal the spy agencyrsquos secret actions against an individualrsquosphone Most significantly GCHQ also penetrated ldquoauthenticationserversrdquo allowing it to decrypt data and voice communications
between a targeted individualrsquos phone and his or her telecomproviderrsquos network A note accompanying the slide asserted thatthe spy agency was ldquovery happy with the data so far and [was]working through the vast quantity of productrdquo
The Great SIM Heist How Spies Stole the Keys to the EncryptionCastle
I welcome your feedback questions and corrections Send an email tohumaninfrastructurepacketpushersnet and I will write a response
Sponsorship and Advertising shy Send an email to humaninfrastructurepacketpushersnet for moreinformation About Piece of A Human Infrastructure A strongly curated newsletter produced by Greg Ferro that contain observations and thoughts on ITInfrastructure with a networking focus that he has seen done discussed reviewed or just simply found on theInternet The format is structured but flexible (like any magazine) and will change over time as I settle into a routine ofcapturing ideas topics that seem relevant and ultimately finding patterns that seem to be interesting to youYour feedback will drives changes so dont hesitate to email with feedback or ask followup questions for thenext edition About Greg Ferro Greg is a coshyhost of the Packet Pushers Podcast a weekly podcast on Data Networking which has over 8000subscribers He blogs regularly at EtherealMindcom for the last eight years and is pretty well known thesedays He also write as an analyst for Network Computing and Gigaom Research He speaks at major events onData Centre Design SDN and life in technology He moderates panels advises customers and technologycompanies He works as a partshytime network engineer in the UK on a freelance basis Because real work configuringrouters and switches remain not only a passion but important to keeping touch with the industry Copyright copy 2015 Packet Pushers Interactive LLC All rights reserved unsubscribe from this list update subscription preferences
the transaction because the customers need advice They have structuredtheir products so that support is minimal
We use software platforms from large corporations like Microsoft Oracle andCisco and applications developed by thousands of small and large companiesaround the world Theoretically these companies should produce productswith the same quality and user experience that Apple produces in theiriPhones and Macbooks In practice we simply donrsquot get the anywhere nearthe same quality
Enterprise IT is More Complex
When I raise this issue with employees of big companies they splutter andcomplain ldquoIts not simple to make these productsrdquo ldquothe testing is very hardrdquoand that Enterprise IT is more complex that I can understand
But this argument doesnrsquot hold water An smartphone is a highly complexdevice that is part of the a highly complex set of interactions with the 3G 4Gand wireless networks The current generation of applications are as complexas any enterprise software solution
Increasingly Enterprise looks foolish when costly corporate desktops have lessreliability that an iPhone After the Sony Pictures hack staff were usingtheir smartphones to run the business Not a long term solution but akey point to notice
Canrsquot See the Change
Once upon a time I believed that my laptop needed several things
Windows OS needed patching at least once a month
Hardware replacement every nine months
Expect at least one maybe two hardware failures in those nine monthsfrom cracked case faulty keyboard to total HDD failure (and data loss)
reinstall OS to blank formatted HDD install Apps restore data and resetall defaults once or twice a year
Since I moved to Apple MAC hardware and software about five years ago Irsquovenot had a single hardware failure Irsquom on my third laptop never had toreinstall the OS and every upgrade allowed me to carry my settings and dataforward All of the things that seemed so necessary when I was using MSWindows XP are just a waste of my life time
What I want1 I want the confidence to say that it is highly unlikely that I will hit abug I accept that bugs are inevitable but they SHOULD BE anexceptional event not something that we plan and budget for Can youbelieve that we actually expect bugs to be in the products that we buy And we run tests to see if we can find them
2 None of us should pay for buggy software Customers should getrefunds or rewards to find bugs There are no incentives for vendors tomake their products reliable In fact we pay extra to get the bugs fixedin the form a service contracts
3 We should not pay maintenance to fix a defective product the vendorshould make good on the promise of quality software amp hardware Itshould work as documented or promised
4 Donrsquot accept second best Lodge complaints with your account manager(if there are any left) or some other means Blog about your bugs andyour experiences in getting them fixed
Best in Class Technical Support
If a product is really good it would not require technical support Cisco isparticularly proud of its Technical Assistance Centre and receives high ratingsfor providing excellent customer support Other successful vendors have wellrun heavily funded and costly support operations that I use to report bugsand product failures
The majority of those bugs should never have shipped or been found duringwell run testing I canrsquot help but wonder if postshysales technical support getmore funding that product testing and quality control
Apple makes their business successful and even more profitable by notneeding technical support Why canrsquot Enterprise IT vendors do the same
You can help me be successful by telling your friends and colleagues by forwardingthem this email They can head over to signup page for the list(URL httpeepurlcomJrXA5 )
Vendor News
Selection on news from vendors that might be worth looking at Looking for unusualexciting weird or amazing without the hoshyhum
Gartner Catches Up
The historians over at Gartner have released a report for people who havemore money than skills on Fixed Form Factor Switching in the DataCenter high that the Ethernet Chassis switches are no longer mandatory inthe data centre
I havenrsquot read the report but the highlight is that ECMP network designsreplaces the need for chassis switches
I say ldquohistoriansrdquo because here is my article from April 2011highlighting the same issue in quite a bit of detail Musing How many10Gigabit Ethernet Ports do you really need shy EtherealMind It has been obvious for quite some time that your data centre doesnrsquot needchassis switches because you donrsquot needs dozens of access switches whenusing 10GbE In fact most data centres barely need more than a handful of1RU format switches maybe a dozen at most including the backbonecore I dont like chassis because of the their complexity when upgrading them Itsmuch easier more reliable and far more predicable to simply replace 1RUswitches than to replace a line card in a chassis
The Road to HTTP2 Looks Smooth
Google has announced support for HTTP2 in Chrome and depreciation ofSPDY and
HTTP is the fundamental networking protocol that powers the webThe majority of sites use version 11 of HTTP which was definedin 1999 with RFC2616 A lot has changed on the web since thenand a new version of the protocol named HTTP2 is well on theroad to standardization We plan to gradually roll out support forHTTP2 in Chrome 40 in the upcoming weeks
Chromium Blog Hello HTTP2 Goodbye SPDY
Cisco Has Yet Another SDN Strategy
If you arenrsquot tired of hearing about SDN from Cisco then its time to startlooking at yet another SDN product from Cisco This time the Nexus 9000products have had a new version of software that uses EVPN (BGP) topropagate VXLAN path information over an ECMP backbone This appears to
be significantly different from the ACI method for the distributed control planethat Cisco uses
Cisco Border Gateway Protocol Control Plane for Virtual ExtensibleLAN shy Cisco
Confused Yeah me too I will try to spend some time looking into this butIrsquom tired of learning each different Cisco SDN strategy before they release yetanother one This makes six I think and it is no longer clear which strategyCisco will eventually pick at the winner ACI doesnrsquot seem to be doing all thatwell if they continue to release competing strategies
Maybe Irsquom missing something and I will work it out in a few weeks
No sponsor this week
Want to reach 5013 of the finest networking professionals in the world Email
packetpushersgmailcom for more details
My personal views on changes in the market or technology on topics issues or technology that I amactively working on or researching All original content that I will write for the magazine
Owning Microsoft WindowsI had a reason to run MS Windows this week and opened myDesktop virtualization tool to spin up my Windows XP instance While I waswaiting for the updates (took over an hour for 4 reboots and updates) Ithought I might buy the latest version and checked out Amazon I got quite a shock
Am I going to pay pound150 for a copy of MS Windows to run on my Mac
Do I really want to pay pound150 for a Windows to run on my laptop I have aWindows Office 365 subscription that gives me MS Office licenses for thefamily since I occasionally use MS Office to decode the proprietary format of
documents from other people so I dont need office No I dont In the end I found a way to work around this and I still dontneed to use Windows MS Windows is not worth pound150 to me when Apple isgiving me the same thing for much lower price And Linux is free
Infographic Effort to Make MulticastWork Because infographics are all the rage right now I figure I should do some too
Testing a New Podcast
As part of researching and preparing for Packet Pushers Ethan and I receivebriefing from vendors on their technology for several hours a weekGenerally we donrsquot have time to write up every briefing because of the timeit takes lacks relevance or may be a smaller point in the overall industrytimeline But we spend time discussing why what and how of what eachvendors is doing
This week Ethan and I decided to trial a podcast on the discussion Wepublished Community Show ndash Gregrsquos amp Ethanrsquos Briefing Review forFebruary 2015 We will record a few shows in the coming weeks and decideif this worth discussing into the future
You can subscribe to Community Channel in iTunes specifically on iTunesor with RSS httppacketpushersnetcategorypodcastshypostcommunityshypodcast
Internets of Interest
Collection of useful relevant or just fun places on the Internet and a bit commentary about what Ive
found interesting about them
Moving Away From EvershyInsecure Adobe Flashplayer
Googlersquos Youtube finally moves away from using Adobe Flash as the defaultmedia player For network engineers this means that blocking access toonline video got more complicated because HTML5 video streams over HTTPand previous methods of block the Streaming Video on 1975 will no longerwork But security professionals who know that the Flash player has a majorsource of exploits and vulnerabilities will be pleased Companies who useFlash super cookies to track users will still be able to use HTML5 to do thesame thing
Of course you can upgrade to a ldquoNext Generation Firewallrdquo that is able toperform deeper inspection into the HTTP stream but encryption is becomingmore common which prevents inspection An article for another day
YouTube Engineering and Developers Blog YouTube now defaults toHTML5
If Carpenters Were Programmers
On the pointless nature of technology interviews who want people withexperience on the latest hot technology
Interviewer But yoursquore not a walnut guru
Carpenter Well Irsquom a carpenter so Irsquove worked with all kinds ofwood you know and there are some differences but I think ifyoursquore a good carpenter
jasonbocknet
Boycott Docker
Docker is a good idea but there is plenty wrong with the technology Forexample the existing networking connectivity is basically NAT to eachcontainer using the Linux Bridge and there is a total lack of isolation and poorperformance Its AWFUL
This article expands to compare with VMs and integration Written with apassionate nix slant its still a good roundup from reasons why you donrsquotwant Docker There isnt enough criticism of Docker IMHO
boycott docker
HP Gloats About Cisco ONE Licensing
Cisco announced long overdue changes to its complex incoherent and costlylicensing schemes across the many different businesses For the last 5 yearseach business unit inside the Cisco conglomerate structure has been usingsoftware licensing as means to increase revenue and profits but there is nocoherent plan Each division has different ideas about what should included orexcluded Increasingly I have found it takes more and more research time todecide which licenses are needed for a given task
HP Competitive has never been subtle and they are taking the opportunity togloat about HP Networks much simpler and easier to live with strategy
At the same time Cisco is trying to dress this up as innovation ormarket leadership Itrsquos not Even with this revamp Cisco still lagsa long way behind HPrsquos licensing models which are simple andstraightforward and have been since Day 1 We donrsquot push youinto purchasing ldquosuitesrdquo with secondshyclass feature sets that youmay or may not want and didnrsquot ask for When you buy our
hardware we donrsquot tell you ldquoall the powerrsquos there but you canrsquotuse it unless you pay us extrardquo We say ldquohere you go enjoy takefull value from our productrdquo Wersquove never believed in nickelshyandshydiming
Cisco isnrsquot the only company that can be aggressive when selling it productand HP is making an attempt here What do you think HP Blogs shy Cisco tries to ease Ciscoshycreated customer pain po shy TheHP Blog Hub
US and UK Spy Agencies Stole the Crypto Keys toSIM Cards
The Intercept reports that spy agencies have stolen the root certificates forSIM cards and can transparently gather data from any smartphone
The privacy of all mobile communications mdash voice calls textmessages and Internet access mdash depends on an encryptedconnection between the cellphone and the wireless carrierrsquosnetwork using keys stored on the SIM a tiny chip smaller than apostage stamp which is inserted into the phone All mobilecommunications on the phone depend on the SIM which storesand guards the encryption keys created by companies likeGemalto SIM cards can be used to store contacts text messagesand other important data like onersquos phone number
Additionally the spy agency targeted unnamed cellular companiesrsquocore networks giving it access to ldquosales staff machines forcustomer information and network engineers machines fornetwork mapsrdquo GCHQ also claimed the ability to manipulate thebilling servers of cell companies to ldquosuppressrdquo charges in an effortto conceal the spy agencyrsquos secret actions against an individualrsquosphone Most significantly GCHQ also penetrated ldquoauthenticationserversrdquo allowing it to decrypt data and voice communications
between a targeted individualrsquos phone and his or her telecomproviderrsquos network A note accompanying the slide asserted thatthe spy agency was ldquovery happy with the data so far and [was]working through the vast quantity of productrdquo
The Great SIM Heist How Spies Stole the Keys to the EncryptionCastle
I welcome your feedback questions and corrections Send an email tohumaninfrastructurepacketpushersnet and I will write a response
Sponsorship and Advertising shy Send an email to humaninfrastructurepacketpushersnet for moreinformation About Piece of A Human Infrastructure A strongly curated newsletter produced by Greg Ferro that contain observations and thoughts on ITInfrastructure with a networking focus that he has seen done discussed reviewed or just simply found on theInternet The format is structured but flexible (like any magazine) and will change over time as I settle into a routine ofcapturing ideas topics that seem relevant and ultimately finding patterns that seem to be interesting to youYour feedback will drives changes so dont hesitate to email with feedback or ask followup questions for thenext edition About Greg Ferro Greg is a coshyhost of the Packet Pushers Podcast a weekly podcast on Data Networking which has over 8000subscribers He blogs regularly at EtherealMindcom for the last eight years and is pretty well known thesedays He also write as an analyst for Network Computing and Gigaom Research He speaks at major events onData Centre Design SDN and life in technology He moderates panels advises customers and technologycompanies He works as a partshytime network engineer in the UK on a freelance basis Because real work configuringrouters and switches remain not only a passion but important to keeping touch with the industry Copyright copy 2015 Packet Pushers Interactive LLC All rights reserved unsubscribe from this list update subscription preferences
Since I moved to Apple MAC hardware and software about five years ago Irsquovenot had a single hardware failure Irsquom on my third laptop never had toreinstall the OS and every upgrade allowed me to carry my settings and dataforward All of the things that seemed so necessary when I was using MSWindows XP are just a waste of my life time
What I want1 I want the confidence to say that it is highly unlikely that I will hit abug I accept that bugs are inevitable but they SHOULD BE anexceptional event not something that we plan and budget for Can youbelieve that we actually expect bugs to be in the products that we buy And we run tests to see if we can find them
2 None of us should pay for buggy software Customers should getrefunds or rewards to find bugs There are no incentives for vendors tomake their products reliable In fact we pay extra to get the bugs fixedin the form a service contracts
3 We should not pay maintenance to fix a defective product the vendorshould make good on the promise of quality software amp hardware Itshould work as documented or promised
4 Donrsquot accept second best Lodge complaints with your account manager(if there are any left) or some other means Blog about your bugs andyour experiences in getting them fixed
Best in Class Technical Support
If a product is really good it would not require technical support Cisco isparticularly proud of its Technical Assistance Centre and receives high ratingsfor providing excellent customer support Other successful vendors have wellrun heavily funded and costly support operations that I use to report bugsand product failures
The majority of those bugs should never have shipped or been found duringwell run testing I canrsquot help but wonder if postshysales technical support getmore funding that product testing and quality control
Apple makes their business successful and even more profitable by notneeding technical support Why canrsquot Enterprise IT vendors do the same
You can help me be successful by telling your friends and colleagues by forwardingthem this email They can head over to signup page for the list(URL httpeepurlcomJrXA5 )
Vendor News
Selection on news from vendors that might be worth looking at Looking for unusualexciting weird or amazing without the hoshyhum
Gartner Catches Up
The historians over at Gartner have released a report for people who havemore money than skills on Fixed Form Factor Switching in the DataCenter high that the Ethernet Chassis switches are no longer mandatory inthe data centre
I havenrsquot read the report but the highlight is that ECMP network designsreplaces the need for chassis switches
I say ldquohistoriansrdquo because here is my article from April 2011highlighting the same issue in quite a bit of detail Musing How many10Gigabit Ethernet Ports do you really need shy EtherealMind It has been obvious for quite some time that your data centre doesnrsquot needchassis switches because you donrsquot needs dozens of access switches whenusing 10GbE In fact most data centres barely need more than a handful of1RU format switches maybe a dozen at most including the backbonecore I dont like chassis because of the their complexity when upgrading them Itsmuch easier more reliable and far more predicable to simply replace 1RUswitches than to replace a line card in a chassis
The Road to HTTP2 Looks Smooth
Google has announced support for HTTP2 in Chrome and depreciation ofSPDY and
HTTP is the fundamental networking protocol that powers the webThe majority of sites use version 11 of HTTP which was definedin 1999 with RFC2616 A lot has changed on the web since thenand a new version of the protocol named HTTP2 is well on theroad to standardization We plan to gradually roll out support forHTTP2 in Chrome 40 in the upcoming weeks
Chromium Blog Hello HTTP2 Goodbye SPDY
Cisco Has Yet Another SDN Strategy
If you arenrsquot tired of hearing about SDN from Cisco then its time to startlooking at yet another SDN product from Cisco This time the Nexus 9000products have had a new version of software that uses EVPN (BGP) topropagate VXLAN path information over an ECMP backbone This appears to
be significantly different from the ACI method for the distributed control planethat Cisco uses
Cisco Border Gateway Protocol Control Plane for Virtual ExtensibleLAN shy Cisco
Confused Yeah me too I will try to spend some time looking into this butIrsquom tired of learning each different Cisco SDN strategy before they release yetanother one This makes six I think and it is no longer clear which strategyCisco will eventually pick at the winner ACI doesnrsquot seem to be doing all thatwell if they continue to release competing strategies
Maybe Irsquom missing something and I will work it out in a few weeks
No sponsor this week
Want to reach 5013 of the finest networking professionals in the world Email
packetpushersgmailcom for more details
My personal views on changes in the market or technology on topics issues or technology that I amactively working on or researching All original content that I will write for the magazine
Owning Microsoft WindowsI had a reason to run MS Windows this week and opened myDesktop virtualization tool to spin up my Windows XP instance While I waswaiting for the updates (took over an hour for 4 reboots and updates) Ithought I might buy the latest version and checked out Amazon I got quite a shock
Am I going to pay pound150 for a copy of MS Windows to run on my Mac
Do I really want to pay pound150 for a Windows to run on my laptop I have aWindows Office 365 subscription that gives me MS Office licenses for thefamily since I occasionally use MS Office to decode the proprietary format of
documents from other people so I dont need office No I dont In the end I found a way to work around this and I still dontneed to use Windows MS Windows is not worth pound150 to me when Apple isgiving me the same thing for much lower price And Linux is free
Infographic Effort to Make MulticastWork Because infographics are all the rage right now I figure I should do some too
Testing a New Podcast
As part of researching and preparing for Packet Pushers Ethan and I receivebriefing from vendors on their technology for several hours a weekGenerally we donrsquot have time to write up every briefing because of the timeit takes lacks relevance or may be a smaller point in the overall industrytimeline But we spend time discussing why what and how of what eachvendors is doing
This week Ethan and I decided to trial a podcast on the discussion Wepublished Community Show ndash Gregrsquos amp Ethanrsquos Briefing Review forFebruary 2015 We will record a few shows in the coming weeks and decideif this worth discussing into the future
You can subscribe to Community Channel in iTunes specifically on iTunesor with RSS httppacketpushersnetcategorypodcastshypostcommunityshypodcast
Internets of Interest
Collection of useful relevant or just fun places on the Internet and a bit commentary about what Ive
found interesting about them
Moving Away From EvershyInsecure Adobe Flashplayer
Googlersquos Youtube finally moves away from using Adobe Flash as the defaultmedia player For network engineers this means that blocking access toonline video got more complicated because HTML5 video streams over HTTPand previous methods of block the Streaming Video on 1975 will no longerwork But security professionals who know that the Flash player has a majorsource of exploits and vulnerabilities will be pleased Companies who useFlash super cookies to track users will still be able to use HTML5 to do thesame thing
Of course you can upgrade to a ldquoNext Generation Firewallrdquo that is able toperform deeper inspection into the HTTP stream but encryption is becomingmore common which prevents inspection An article for another day
YouTube Engineering and Developers Blog YouTube now defaults toHTML5
If Carpenters Were Programmers
On the pointless nature of technology interviews who want people withexperience on the latest hot technology
Interviewer But yoursquore not a walnut guru
Carpenter Well Irsquom a carpenter so Irsquove worked with all kinds ofwood you know and there are some differences but I think ifyoursquore a good carpenter
jasonbocknet
Boycott Docker
Docker is a good idea but there is plenty wrong with the technology Forexample the existing networking connectivity is basically NAT to eachcontainer using the Linux Bridge and there is a total lack of isolation and poorperformance Its AWFUL
This article expands to compare with VMs and integration Written with apassionate nix slant its still a good roundup from reasons why you donrsquotwant Docker There isnt enough criticism of Docker IMHO
boycott docker
HP Gloats About Cisco ONE Licensing
Cisco announced long overdue changes to its complex incoherent and costlylicensing schemes across the many different businesses For the last 5 yearseach business unit inside the Cisco conglomerate structure has been usingsoftware licensing as means to increase revenue and profits but there is nocoherent plan Each division has different ideas about what should included orexcluded Increasingly I have found it takes more and more research time todecide which licenses are needed for a given task
HP Competitive has never been subtle and they are taking the opportunity togloat about HP Networks much simpler and easier to live with strategy
At the same time Cisco is trying to dress this up as innovation ormarket leadership Itrsquos not Even with this revamp Cisco still lagsa long way behind HPrsquos licensing models which are simple andstraightforward and have been since Day 1 We donrsquot push youinto purchasing ldquosuitesrdquo with secondshyclass feature sets that youmay or may not want and didnrsquot ask for When you buy our
hardware we donrsquot tell you ldquoall the powerrsquos there but you canrsquotuse it unless you pay us extrardquo We say ldquohere you go enjoy takefull value from our productrdquo Wersquove never believed in nickelshyandshydiming
Cisco isnrsquot the only company that can be aggressive when selling it productand HP is making an attempt here What do you think HP Blogs shy Cisco tries to ease Ciscoshycreated customer pain po shy TheHP Blog Hub
US and UK Spy Agencies Stole the Crypto Keys toSIM Cards
The Intercept reports that spy agencies have stolen the root certificates forSIM cards and can transparently gather data from any smartphone
The privacy of all mobile communications mdash voice calls textmessages and Internet access mdash depends on an encryptedconnection between the cellphone and the wireless carrierrsquosnetwork using keys stored on the SIM a tiny chip smaller than apostage stamp which is inserted into the phone All mobilecommunications on the phone depend on the SIM which storesand guards the encryption keys created by companies likeGemalto SIM cards can be used to store contacts text messagesand other important data like onersquos phone number
Additionally the spy agency targeted unnamed cellular companiesrsquocore networks giving it access to ldquosales staff machines forcustomer information and network engineers machines fornetwork mapsrdquo GCHQ also claimed the ability to manipulate thebilling servers of cell companies to ldquosuppressrdquo charges in an effortto conceal the spy agencyrsquos secret actions against an individualrsquosphone Most significantly GCHQ also penetrated ldquoauthenticationserversrdquo allowing it to decrypt data and voice communications
between a targeted individualrsquos phone and his or her telecomproviderrsquos network A note accompanying the slide asserted thatthe spy agency was ldquovery happy with the data so far and [was]working through the vast quantity of productrdquo
The Great SIM Heist How Spies Stole the Keys to the EncryptionCastle
I welcome your feedback questions and corrections Send an email tohumaninfrastructurepacketpushersnet and I will write a response
Sponsorship and Advertising shy Send an email to humaninfrastructurepacketpushersnet for moreinformation About Piece of A Human Infrastructure A strongly curated newsletter produced by Greg Ferro that contain observations and thoughts on ITInfrastructure with a networking focus that he has seen done discussed reviewed or just simply found on theInternet The format is structured but flexible (like any magazine) and will change over time as I settle into a routine ofcapturing ideas topics that seem relevant and ultimately finding patterns that seem to be interesting to youYour feedback will drives changes so dont hesitate to email with feedback or ask followup questions for thenext edition About Greg Ferro Greg is a coshyhost of the Packet Pushers Podcast a weekly podcast on Data Networking which has over 8000subscribers He blogs regularly at EtherealMindcom for the last eight years and is pretty well known thesedays He also write as an analyst for Network Computing and Gigaom Research He speaks at major events onData Centre Design SDN and life in technology He moderates panels advises customers and technologycompanies He works as a partshytime network engineer in the UK on a freelance basis Because real work configuringrouters and switches remain not only a passion but important to keeping touch with the industry Copyright copy 2015 Packet Pushers Interactive LLC All rights reserved unsubscribe from this list update subscription preferences
Apple makes their business successful and even more profitable by notneeding technical support Why canrsquot Enterprise IT vendors do the same
You can help me be successful by telling your friends and colleagues by forwardingthem this email They can head over to signup page for the list(URL httpeepurlcomJrXA5 )
Vendor News
Selection on news from vendors that might be worth looking at Looking for unusualexciting weird or amazing without the hoshyhum
Gartner Catches Up
The historians over at Gartner have released a report for people who havemore money than skills on Fixed Form Factor Switching in the DataCenter high that the Ethernet Chassis switches are no longer mandatory inthe data centre
I havenrsquot read the report but the highlight is that ECMP network designsreplaces the need for chassis switches
I say ldquohistoriansrdquo because here is my article from April 2011highlighting the same issue in quite a bit of detail Musing How many10Gigabit Ethernet Ports do you really need shy EtherealMind It has been obvious for quite some time that your data centre doesnrsquot needchassis switches because you donrsquot needs dozens of access switches whenusing 10GbE In fact most data centres barely need more than a handful of1RU format switches maybe a dozen at most including the backbonecore I dont like chassis because of the their complexity when upgrading them Itsmuch easier more reliable and far more predicable to simply replace 1RUswitches than to replace a line card in a chassis
The Road to HTTP2 Looks Smooth
Google has announced support for HTTP2 in Chrome and depreciation ofSPDY and
HTTP is the fundamental networking protocol that powers the webThe majority of sites use version 11 of HTTP which was definedin 1999 with RFC2616 A lot has changed on the web since thenand a new version of the protocol named HTTP2 is well on theroad to standardization We plan to gradually roll out support forHTTP2 in Chrome 40 in the upcoming weeks
Chromium Blog Hello HTTP2 Goodbye SPDY
Cisco Has Yet Another SDN Strategy
If you arenrsquot tired of hearing about SDN from Cisco then its time to startlooking at yet another SDN product from Cisco This time the Nexus 9000products have had a new version of software that uses EVPN (BGP) topropagate VXLAN path information over an ECMP backbone This appears to
be significantly different from the ACI method for the distributed control planethat Cisco uses
Cisco Border Gateway Protocol Control Plane for Virtual ExtensibleLAN shy Cisco
Confused Yeah me too I will try to spend some time looking into this butIrsquom tired of learning each different Cisco SDN strategy before they release yetanother one This makes six I think and it is no longer clear which strategyCisco will eventually pick at the winner ACI doesnrsquot seem to be doing all thatwell if they continue to release competing strategies
Maybe Irsquom missing something and I will work it out in a few weeks
No sponsor this week
Want to reach 5013 of the finest networking professionals in the world Email
packetpushersgmailcom for more details
My personal views on changes in the market or technology on topics issues or technology that I amactively working on or researching All original content that I will write for the magazine
Owning Microsoft WindowsI had a reason to run MS Windows this week and opened myDesktop virtualization tool to spin up my Windows XP instance While I waswaiting for the updates (took over an hour for 4 reboots and updates) Ithought I might buy the latest version and checked out Amazon I got quite a shock
Am I going to pay pound150 for a copy of MS Windows to run on my Mac
Do I really want to pay pound150 for a Windows to run on my laptop I have aWindows Office 365 subscription that gives me MS Office licenses for thefamily since I occasionally use MS Office to decode the proprietary format of
documents from other people so I dont need office No I dont In the end I found a way to work around this and I still dontneed to use Windows MS Windows is not worth pound150 to me when Apple isgiving me the same thing for much lower price And Linux is free
Infographic Effort to Make MulticastWork Because infographics are all the rage right now I figure I should do some too
Testing a New Podcast
As part of researching and preparing for Packet Pushers Ethan and I receivebriefing from vendors on their technology for several hours a weekGenerally we donrsquot have time to write up every briefing because of the timeit takes lacks relevance or may be a smaller point in the overall industrytimeline But we spend time discussing why what and how of what eachvendors is doing
This week Ethan and I decided to trial a podcast on the discussion Wepublished Community Show ndash Gregrsquos amp Ethanrsquos Briefing Review forFebruary 2015 We will record a few shows in the coming weeks and decideif this worth discussing into the future
You can subscribe to Community Channel in iTunes specifically on iTunesor with RSS httppacketpushersnetcategorypodcastshypostcommunityshypodcast
Internets of Interest
Collection of useful relevant or just fun places on the Internet and a bit commentary about what Ive
found interesting about them
Moving Away From EvershyInsecure Adobe Flashplayer
Googlersquos Youtube finally moves away from using Adobe Flash as the defaultmedia player For network engineers this means that blocking access toonline video got more complicated because HTML5 video streams over HTTPand previous methods of block the Streaming Video on 1975 will no longerwork But security professionals who know that the Flash player has a majorsource of exploits and vulnerabilities will be pleased Companies who useFlash super cookies to track users will still be able to use HTML5 to do thesame thing
Of course you can upgrade to a ldquoNext Generation Firewallrdquo that is able toperform deeper inspection into the HTTP stream but encryption is becomingmore common which prevents inspection An article for another day
YouTube Engineering and Developers Blog YouTube now defaults toHTML5
If Carpenters Were Programmers
On the pointless nature of technology interviews who want people withexperience on the latest hot technology
Interviewer But yoursquore not a walnut guru
Carpenter Well Irsquom a carpenter so Irsquove worked with all kinds ofwood you know and there are some differences but I think ifyoursquore a good carpenter
jasonbocknet
Boycott Docker
Docker is a good idea but there is plenty wrong with the technology Forexample the existing networking connectivity is basically NAT to eachcontainer using the Linux Bridge and there is a total lack of isolation and poorperformance Its AWFUL
This article expands to compare with VMs and integration Written with apassionate nix slant its still a good roundup from reasons why you donrsquotwant Docker There isnt enough criticism of Docker IMHO
boycott docker
HP Gloats About Cisco ONE Licensing
Cisco announced long overdue changes to its complex incoherent and costlylicensing schemes across the many different businesses For the last 5 yearseach business unit inside the Cisco conglomerate structure has been usingsoftware licensing as means to increase revenue and profits but there is nocoherent plan Each division has different ideas about what should included orexcluded Increasingly I have found it takes more and more research time todecide which licenses are needed for a given task
HP Competitive has never been subtle and they are taking the opportunity togloat about HP Networks much simpler and easier to live with strategy
At the same time Cisco is trying to dress this up as innovation ormarket leadership Itrsquos not Even with this revamp Cisco still lagsa long way behind HPrsquos licensing models which are simple andstraightforward and have been since Day 1 We donrsquot push youinto purchasing ldquosuitesrdquo with secondshyclass feature sets that youmay or may not want and didnrsquot ask for When you buy our
hardware we donrsquot tell you ldquoall the powerrsquos there but you canrsquotuse it unless you pay us extrardquo We say ldquohere you go enjoy takefull value from our productrdquo Wersquove never believed in nickelshyandshydiming
Cisco isnrsquot the only company that can be aggressive when selling it productand HP is making an attempt here What do you think HP Blogs shy Cisco tries to ease Ciscoshycreated customer pain po shy TheHP Blog Hub
US and UK Spy Agencies Stole the Crypto Keys toSIM Cards
The Intercept reports that spy agencies have stolen the root certificates forSIM cards and can transparently gather data from any smartphone
The privacy of all mobile communications mdash voice calls textmessages and Internet access mdash depends on an encryptedconnection between the cellphone and the wireless carrierrsquosnetwork using keys stored on the SIM a tiny chip smaller than apostage stamp which is inserted into the phone All mobilecommunications on the phone depend on the SIM which storesand guards the encryption keys created by companies likeGemalto SIM cards can be used to store contacts text messagesand other important data like onersquos phone number
Additionally the spy agency targeted unnamed cellular companiesrsquocore networks giving it access to ldquosales staff machines forcustomer information and network engineers machines fornetwork mapsrdquo GCHQ also claimed the ability to manipulate thebilling servers of cell companies to ldquosuppressrdquo charges in an effortto conceal the spy agencyrsquos secret actions against an individualrsquosphone Most significantly GCHQ also penetrated ldquoauthenticationserversrdquo allowing it to decrypt data and voice communications
between a targeted individualrsquos phone and his or her telecomproviderrsquos network A note accompanying the slide asserted thatthe spy agency was ldquovery happy with the data so far and [was]working through the vast quantity of productrdquo
The Great SIM Heist How Spies Stole the Keys to the EncryptionCastle
I welcome your feedback questions and corrections Send an email tohumaninfrastructurepacketpushersnet and I will write a response
Sponsorship and Advertising shy Send an email to humaninfrastructurepacketpushersnet for moreinformation About Piece of A Human Infrastructure A strongly curated newsletter produced by Greg Ferro that contain observations and thoughts on ITInfrastructure with a networking focus that he has seen done discussed reviewed or just simply found on theInternet The format is structured but flexible (like any magazine) and will change over time as I settle into a routine ofcapturing ideas topics that seem relevant and ultimately finding patterns that seem to be interesting to youYour feedback will drives changes so dont hesitate to email with feedback or ask followup questions for thenext edition About Greg Ferro Greg is a coshyhost of the Packet Pushers Podcast a weekly podcast on Data Networking which has over 8000subscribers He blogs regularly at EtherealMindcom for the last eight years and is pretty well known thesedays He also write as an analyst for Network Computing and Gigaom Research He speaks at major events onData Centre Design SDN and life in technology He moderates panels advises customers and technologycompanies He works as a partshytime network engineer in the UK on a freelance basis Because real work configuringrouters and switches remain not only a passion but important to keeping touch with the industry Copyright copy 2015 Packet Pushers Interactive LLC All rights reserved unsubscribe from this list update subscription preferences
I say ldquohistoriansrdquo because here is my article from April 2011highlighting the same issue in quite a bit of detail Musing How many10Gigabit Ethernet Ports do you really need shy EtherealMind It has been obvious for quite some time that your data centre doesnrsquot needchassis switches because you donrsquot needs dozens of access switches whenusing 10GbE In fact most data centres barely need more than a handful of1RU format switches maybe a dozen at most including the backbonecore I dont like chassis because of the their complexity when upgrading them Itsmuch easier more reliable and far more predicable to simply replace 1RUswitches than to replace a line card in a chassis
The Road to HTTP2 Looks Smooth
Google has announced support for HTTP2 in Chrome and depreciation ofSPDY and
HTTP is the fundamental networking protocol that powers the webThe majority of sites use version 11 of HTTP which was definedin 1999 with RFC2616 A lot has changed on the web since thenand a new version of the protocol named HTTP2 is well on theroad to standardization We plan to gradually roll out support forHTTP2 in Chrome 40 in the upcoming weeks
Chromium Blog Hello HTTP2 Goodbye SPDY
Cisco Has Yet Another SDN Strategy
If you arenrsquot tired of hearing about SDN from Cisco then its time to startlooking at yet another SDN product from Cisco This time the Nexus 9000products have had a new version of software that uses EVPN (BGP) topropagate VXLAN path information over an ECMP backbone This appears to
be significantly different from the ACI method for the distributed control planethat Cisco uses
Cisco Border Gateway Protocol Control Plane for Virtual ExtensibleLAN shy Cisco
Confused Yeah me too I will try to spend some time looking into this butIrsquom tired of learning each different Cisco SDN strategy before they release yetanother one This makes six I think and it is no longer clear which strategyCisco will eventually pick at the winner ACI doesnrsquot seem to be doing all thatwell if they continue to release competing strategies
Maybe Irsquom missing something and I will work it out in a few weeks
No sponsor this week
Want to reach 5013 of the finest networking professionals in the world Email
packetpushersgmailcom for more details
My personal views on changes in the market or technology on topics issues or technology that I amactively working on or researching All original content that I will write for the magazine
Owning Microsoft WindowsI had a reason to run MS Windows this week and opened myDesktop virtualization tool to spin up my Windows XP instance While I waswaiting for the updates (took over an hour for 4 reboots and updates) Ithought I might buy the latest version and checked out Amazon I got quite a shock
Am I going to pay pound150 for a copy of MS Windows to run on my Mac
Do I really want to pay pound150 for a Windows to run on my laptop I have aWindows Office 365 subscription that gives me MS Office licenses for thefamily since I occasionally use MS Office to decode the proprietary format of
documents from other people so I dont need office No I dont In the end I found a way to work around this and I still dontneed to use Windows MS Windows is not worth pound150 to me when Apple isgiving me the same thing for much lower price And Linux is free
Infographic Effort to Make MulticastWork Because infographics are all the rage right now I figure I should do some too
Testing a New Podcast
As part of researching and preparing for Packet Pushers Ethan and I receivebriefing from vendors on their technology for several hours a weekGenerally we donrsquot have time to write up every briefing because of the timeit takes lacks relevance or may be a smaller point in the overall industrytimeline But we spend time discussing why what and how of what eachvendors is doing
This week Ethan and I decided to trial a podcast on the discussion Wepublished Community Show ndash Gregrsquos amp Ethanrsquos Briefing Review forFebruary 2015 We will record a few shows in the coming weeks and decideif this worth discussing into the future
You can subscribe to Community Channel in iTunes specifically on iTunesor with RSS httppacketpushersnetcategorypodcastshypostcommunityshypodcast
Internets of Interest
Collection of useful relevant or just fun places on the Internet and a bit commentary about what Ive
found interesting about them
Moving Away From EvershyInsecure Adobe Flashplayer
Googlersquos Youtube finally moves away from using Adobe Flash as the defaultmedia player For network engineers this means that blocking access toonline video got more complicated because HTML5 video streams over HTTPand previous methods of block the Streaming Video on 1975 will no longerwork But security professionals who know that the Flash player has a majorsource of exploits and vulnerabilities will be pleased Companies who useFlash super cookies to track users will still be able to use HTML5 to do thesame thing
Of course you can upgrade to a ldquoNext Generation Firewallrdquo that is able toperform deeper inspection into the HTTP stream but encryption is becomingmore common which prevents inspection An article for another day
YouTube Engineering and Developers Blog YouTube now defaults toHTML5
If Carpenters Were Programmers
On the pointless nature of technology interviews who want people withexperience on the latest hot technology
Interviewer But yoursquore not a walnut guru
Carpenter Well Irsquom a carpenter so Irsquove worked with all kinds ofwood you know and there are some differences but I think ifyoursquore a good carpenter
jasonbocknet
Boycott Docker
Docker is a good idea but there is plenty wrong with the technology Forexample the existing networking connectivity is basically NAT to eachcontainer using the Linux Bridge and there is a total lack of isolation and poorperformance Its AWFUL
This article expands to compare with VMs and integration Written with apassionate nix slant its still a good roundup from reasons why you donrsquotwant Docker There isnt enough criticism of Docker IMHO
boycott docker
HP Gloats About Cisco ONE Licensing
Cisco announced long overdue changes to its complex incoherent and costlylicensing schemes across the many different businesses For the last 5 yearseach business unit inside the Cisco conglomerate structure has been usingsoftware licensing as means to increase revenue and profits but there is nocoherent plan Each division has different ideas about what should included orexcluded Increasingly I have found it takes more and more research time todecide which licenses are needed for a given task
HP Competitive has never been subtle and they are taking the opportunity togloat about HP Networks much simpler and easier to live with strategy
At the same time Cisco is trying to dress this up as innovation ormarket leadership Itrsquos not Even with this revamp Cisco still lagsa long way behind HPrsquos licensing models which are simple andstraightforward and have been since Day 1 We donrsquot push youinto purchasing ldquosuitesrdquo with secondshyclass feature sets that youmay or may not want and didnrsquot ask for When you buy our
hardware we donrsquot tell you ldquoall the powerrsquos there but you canrsquotuse it unless you pay us extrardquo We say ldquohere you go enjoy takefull value from our productrdquo Wersquove never believed in nickelshyandshydiming
Cisco isnrsquot the only company that can be aggressive when selling it productand HP is making an attempt here What do you think HP Blogs shy Cisco tries to ease Ciscoshycreated customer pain po shy TheHP Blog Hub
US and UK Spy Agencies Stole the Crypto Keys toSIM Cards
The Intercept reports that spy agencies have stolen the root certificates forSIM cards and can transparently gather data from any smartphone
The privacy of all mobile communications mdash voice calls textmessages and Internet access mdash depends on an encryptedconnection between the cellphone and the wireless carrierrsquosnetwork using keys stored on the SIM a tiny chip smaller than apostage stamp which is inserted into the phone All mobilecommunications on the phone depend on the SIM which storesand guards the encryption keys created by companies likeGemalto SIM cards can be used to store contacts text messagesand other important data like onersquos phone number
Additionally the spy agency targeted unnamed cellular companiesrsquocore networks giving it access to ldquosales staff machines forcustomer information and network engineers machines fornetwork mapsrdquo GCHQ also claimed the ability to manipulate thebilling servers of cell companies to ldquosuppressrdquo charges in an effortto conceal the spy agencyrsquos secret actions against an individualrsquosphone Most significantly GCHQ also penetrated ldquoauthenticationserversrdquo allowing it to decrypt data and voice communications
between a targeted individualrsquos phone and his or her telecomproviderrsquos network A note accompanying the slide asserted thatthe spy agency was ldquovery happy with the data so far and [was]working through the vast quantity of productrdquo
The Great SIM Heist How Spies Stole the Keys to the EncryptionCastle
I welcome your feedback questions and corrections Send an email tohumaninfrastructurepacketpushersnet and I will write a response
Sponsorship and Advertising shy Send an email to humaninfrastructurepacketpushersnet for moreinformation About Piece of A Human Infrastructure A strongly curated newsletter produced by Greg Ferro that contain observations and thoughts on ITInfrastructure with a networking focus that he has seen done discussed reviewed or just simply found on theInternet The format is structured but flexible (like any magazine) and will change over time as I settle into a routine ofcapturing ideas topics that seem relevant and ultimately finding patterns that seem to be interesting to youYour feedback will drives changes so dont hesitate to email with feedback or ask followup questions for thenext edition About Greg Ferro Greg is a coshyhost of the Packet Pushers Podcast a weekly podcast on Data Networking which has over 8000subscribers He blogs regularly at EtherealMindcom for the last eight years and is pretty well known thesedays He also write as an analyst for Network Computing and Gigaom Research He speaks at major events onData Centre Design SDN and life in technology He moderates panels advises customers and technologycompanies He works as a partshytime network engineer in the UK on a freelance basis Because real work configuringrouters and switches remain not only a passion but important to keeping touch with the industry Copyright copy 2015 Packet Pushers Interactive LLC All rights reserved unsubscribe from this list update subscription preferences
be significantly different from the ACI method for the distributed control planethat Cisco uses
Cisco Border Gateway Protocol Control Plane for Virtual ExtensibleLAN shy Cisco
Confused Yeah me too I will try to spend some time looking into this butIrsquom tired of learning each different Cisco SDN strategy before they release yetanother one This makes six I think and it is no longer clear which strategyCisco will eventually pick at the winner ACI doesnrsquot seem to be doing all thatwell if they continue to release competing strategies
Maybe Irsquom missing something and I will work it out in a few weeks
No sponsor this week
Want to reach 5013 of the finest networking professionals in the world Email
packetpushersgmailcom for more details
My personal views on changes in the market or technology on topics issues or technology that I amactively working on or researching All original content that I will write for the magazine
Owning Microsoft WindowsI had a reason to run MS Windows this week and opened myDesktop virtualization tool to spin up my Windows XP instance While I waswaiting for the updates (took over an hour for 4 reboots and updates) Ithought I might buy the latest version and checked out Amazon I got quite a shock
Am I going to pay pound150 for a copy of MS Windows to run on my Mac
Do I really want to pay pound150 for a Windows to run on my laptop I have aWindows Office 365 subscription that gives me MS Office licenses for thefamily since I occasionally use MS Office to decode the proprietary format of
documents from other people so I dont need office No I dont In the end I found a way to work around this and I still dontneed to use Windows MS Windows is not worth pound150 to me when Apple isgiving me the same thing for much lower price And Linux is free
Infographic Effort to Make MulticastWork Because infographics are all the rage right now I figure I should do some too
Testing a New Podcast
As part of researching and preparing for Packet Pushers Ethan and I receivebriefing from vendors on their technology for several hours a weekGenerally we donrsquot have time to write up every briefing because of the timeit takes lacks relevance or may be a smaller point in the overall industrytimeline But we spend time discussing why what and how of what eachvendors is doing
This week Ethan and I decided to trial a podcast on the discussion Wepublished Community Show ndash Gregrsquos amp Ethanrsquos Briefing Review forFebruary 2015 We will record a few shows in the coming weeks and decideif this worth discussing into the future
You can subscribe to Community Channel in iTunes specifically on iTunesor with RSS httppacketpushersnetcategorypodcastshypostcommunityshypodcast
Internets of Interest
Collection of useful relevant or just fun places on the Internet and a bit commentary about what Ive
found interesting about them
Moving Away From EvershyInsecure Adobe Flashplayer
Googlersquos Youtube finally moves away from using Adobe Flash as the defaultmedia player For network engineers this means that blocking access toonline video got more complicated because HTML5 video streams over HTTPand previous methods of block the Streaming Video on 1975 will no longerwork But security professionals who know that the Flash player has a majorsource of exploits and vulnerabilities will be pleased Companies who useFlash super cookies to track users will still be able to use HTML5 to do thesame thing
Of course you can upgrade to a ldquoNext Generation Firewallrdquo that is able toperform deeper inspection into the HTTP stream but encryption is becomingmore common which prevents inspection An article for another day
YouTube Engineering and Developers Blog YouTube now defaults toHTML5
If Carpenters Were Programmers
On the pointless nature of technology interviews who want people withexperience on the latest hot technology
Interviewer But yoursquore not a walnut guru
Carpenter Well Irsquom a carpenter so Irsquove worked with all kinds ofwood you know and there are some differences but I think ifyoursquore a good carpenter
jasonbocknet
Boycott Docker
Docker is a good idea but there is plenty wrong with the technology Forexample the existing networking connectivity is basically NAT to eachcontainer using the Linux Bridge and there is a total lack of isolation and poorperformance Its AWFUL
This article expands to compare with VMs and integration Written with apassionate nix slant its still a good roundup from reasons why you donrsquotwant Docker There isnt enough criticism of Docker IMHO
boycott docker
HP Gloats About Cisco ONE Licensing
Cisco announced long overdue changes to its complex incoherent and costlylicensing schemes across the many different businesses For the last 5 yearseach business unit inside the Cisco conglomerate structure has been usingsoftware licensing as means to increase revenue and profits but there is nocoherent plan Each division has different ideas about what should included orexcluded Increasingly I have found it takes more and more research time todecide which licenses are needed for a given task
HP Competitive has never been subtle and they are taking the opportunity togloat about HP Networks much simpler and easier to live with strategy
At the same time Cisco is trying to dress this up as innovation ormarket leadership Itrsquos not Even with this revamp Cisco still lagsa long way behind HPrsquos licensing models which are simple andstraightforward and have been since Day 1 We donrsquot push youinto purchasing ldquosuitesrdquo with secondshyclass feature sets that youmay or may not want and didnrsquot ask for When you buy our
hardware we donrsquot tell you ldquoall the powerrsquos there but you canrsquotuse it unless you pay us extrardquo We say ldquohere you go enjoy takefull value from our productrdquo Wersquove never believed in nickelshyandshydiming
Cisco isnrsquot the only company that can be aggressive when selling it productand HP is making an attempt here What do you think HP Blogs shy Cisco tries to ease Ciscoshycreated customer pain po shy TheHP Blog Hub
US and UK Spy Agencies Stole the Crypto Keys toSIM Cards
The Intercept reports that spy agencies have stolen the root certificates forSIM cards and can transparently gather data from any smartphone
The privacy of all mobile communications mdash voice calls textmessages and Internet access mdash depends on an encryptedconnection between the cellphone and the wireless carrierrsquosnetwork using keys stored on the SIM a tiny chip smaller than apostage stamp which is inserted into the phone All mobilecommunications on the phone depend on the SIM which storesand guards the encryption keys created by companies likeGemalto SIM cards can be used to store contacts text messagesand other important data like onersquos phone number
Additionally the spy agency targeted unnamed cellular companiesrsquocore networks giving it access to ldquosales staff machines forcustomer information and network engineers machines fornetwork mapsrdquo GCHQ also claimed the ability to manipulate thebilling servers of cell companies to ldquosuppressrdquo charges in an effortto conceal the spy agencyrsquos secret actions against an individualrsquosphone Most significantly GCHQ also penetrated ldquoauthenticationserversrdquo allowing it to decrypt data and voice communications
between a targeted individualrsquos phone and his or her telecomproviderrsquos network A note accompanying the slide asserted thatthe spy agency was ldquovery happy with the data so far and [was]working through the vast quantity of productrdquo
The Great SIM Heist How Spies Stole the Keys to the EncryptionCastle
I welcome your feedback questions and corrections Send an email tohumaninfrastructurepacketpushersnet and I will write a response
Sponsorship and Advertising shy Send an email to humaninfrastructurepacketpushersnet for moreinformation About Piece of A Human Infrastructure A strongly curated newsletter produced by Greg Ferro that contain observations and thoughts on ITInfrastructure with a networking focus that he has seen done discussed reviewed or just simply found on theInternet The format is structured but flexible (like any magazine) and will change over time as I settle into a routine ofcapturing ideas topics that seem relevant and ultimately finding patterns that seem to be interesting to youYour feedback will drives changes so dont hesitate to email with feedback or ask followup questions for thenext edition About Greg Ferro Greg is a coshyhost of the Packet Pushers Podcast a weekly podcast on Data Networking which has over 8000subscribers He blogs regularly at EtherealMindcom for the last eight years and is pretty well known thesedays He also write as an analyst for Network Computing and Gigaom Research He speaks at major events onData Centre Design SDN and life in technology He moderates panels advises customers and technologycompanies He works as a partshytime network engineer in the UK on a freelance basis Because real work configuringrouters and switches remain not only a passion but important to keeping touch with the industry Copyright copy 2015 Packet Pushers Interactive LLC All rights reserved unsubscribe from this list update subscription preferences
Owning Microsoft WindowsI had a reason to run MS Windows this week and opened myDesktop virtualization tool to spin up my Windows XP instance While I waswaiting for the updates (took over an hour for 4 reboots and updates) Ithought I might buy the latest version and checked out Amazon I got quite a shock
Am I going to pay pound150 for a copy of MS Windows to run on my Mac
Do I really want to pay pound150 for a Windows to run on my laptop I have aWindows Office 365 subscription that gives me MS Office licenses for thefamily since I occasionally use MS Office to decode the proprietary format of
documents from other people so I dont need office No I dont In the end I found a way to work around this and I still dontneed to use Windows MS Windows is not worth pound150 to me when Apple isgiving me the same thing for much lower price And Linux is free
Infographic Effort to Make MulticastWork Because infographics are all the rage right now I figure I should do some too
Testing a New Podcast
As part of researching and preparing for Packet Pushers Ethan and I receivebriefing from vendors on their technology for several hours a weekGenerally we donrsquot have time to write up every briefing because of the timeit takes lacks relevance or may be a smaller point in the overall industrytimeline But we spend time discussing why what and how of what eachvendors is doing
This week Ethan and I decided to trial a podcast on the discussion Wepublished Community Show ndash Gregrsquos amp Ethanrsquos Briefing Review forFebruary 2015 We will record a few shows in the coming weeks and decideif this worth discussing into the future
You can subscribe to Community Channel in iTunes specifically on iTunesor with RSS httppacketpushersnetcategorypodcastshypostcommunityshypodcast
Internets of Interest
Collection of useful relevant or just fun places on the Internet and a bit commentary about what Ive
found interesting about them
Moving Away From EvershyInsecure Adobe Flashplayer
Googlersquos Youtube finally moves away from using Adobe Flash as the defaultmedia player For network engineers this means that blocking access toonline video got more complicated because HTML5 video streams over HTTPand previous methods of block the Streaming Video on 1975 will no longerwork But security professionals who know that the Flash player has a majorsource of exploits and vulnerabilities will be pleased Companies who useFlash super cookies to track users will still be able to use HTML5 to do thesame thing
Of course you can upgrade to a ldquoNext Generation Firewallrdquo that is able toperform deeper inspection into the HTTP stream but encryption is becomingmore common which prevents inspection An article for another day
YouTube Engineering and Developers Blog YouTube now defaults toHTML5
If Carpenters Were Programmers
On the pointless nature of technology interviews who want people withexperience on the latest hot technology
Interviewer But yoursquore not a walnut guru
Carpenter Well Irsquom a carpenter so Irsquove worked with all kinds ofwood you know and there are some differences but I think ifyoursquore a good carpenter
jasonbocknet
Boycott Docker
Docker is a good idea but there is plenty wrong with the technology Forexample the existing networking connectivity is basically NAT to eachcontainer using the Linux Bridge and there is a total lack of isolation and poorperformance Its AWFUL
This article expands to compare with VMs and integration Written with apassionate nix slant its still a good roundup from reasons why you donrsquotwant Docker There isnt enough criticism of Docker IMHO
boycott docker
HP Gloats About Cisco ONE Licensing
Cisco announced long overdue changes to its complex incoherent and costlylicensing schemes across the many different businesses For the last 5 yearseach business unit inside the Cisco conglomerate structure has been usingsoftware licensing as means to increase revenue and profits but there is nocoherent plan Each division has different ideas about what should included orexcluded Increasingly I have found it takes more and more research time todecide which licenses are needed for a given task
HP Competitive has never been subtle and they are taking the opportunity togloat about HP Networks much simpler and easier to live with strategy
At the same time Cisco is trying to dress this up as innovation ormarket leadership Itrsquos not Even with this revamp Cisco still lagsa long way behind HPrsquos licensing models which are simple andstraightforward and have been since Day 1 We donrsquot push youinto purchasing ldquosuitesrdquo with secondshyclass feature sets that youmay or may not want and didnrsquot ask for When you buy our
hardware we donrsquot tell you ldquoall the powerrsquos there but you canrsquotuse it unless you pay us extrardquo We say ldquohere you go enjoy takefull value from our productrdquo Wersquove never believed in nickelshyandshydiming
Cisco isnrsquot the only company that can be aggressive when selling it productand HP is making an attempt here What do you think HP Blogs shy Cisco tries to ease Ciscoshycreated customer pain po shy TheHP Blog Hub
US and UK Spy Agencies Stole the Crypto Keys toSIM Cards
The Intercept reports that spy agencies have stolen the root certificates forSIM cards and can transparently gather data from any smartphone
The privacy of all mobile communications mdash voice calls textmessages and Internet access mdash depends on an encryptedconnection between the cellphone and the wireless carrierrsquosnetwork using keys stored on the SIM a tiny chip smaller than apostage stamp which is inserted into the phone All mobilecommunications on the phone depend on the SIM which storesand guards the encryption keys created by companies likeGemalto SIM cards can be used to store contacts text messagesand other important data like onersquos phone number
Additionally the spy agency targeted unnamed cellular companiesrsquocore networks giving it access to ldquosales staff machines forcustomer information and network engineers machines fornetwork mapsrdquo GCHQ also claimed the ability to manipulate thebilling servers of cell companies to ldquosuppressrdquo charges in an effortto conceal the spy agencyrsquos secret actions against an individualrsquosphone Most significantly GCHQ also penetrated ldquoauthenticationserversrdquo allowing it to decrypt data and voice communications
between a targeted individualrsquos phone and his or her telecomproviderrsquos network A note accompanying the slide asserted thatthe spy agency was ldquovery happy with the data so far and [was]working through the vast quantity of productrdquo
The Great SIM Heist How Spies Stole the Keys to the EncryptionCastle
I welcome your feedback questions and corrections Send an email tohumaninfrastructurepacketpushersnet and I will write a response
Sponsorship and Advertising shy Send an email to humaninfrastructurepacketpushersnet for moreinformation About Piece of A Human Infrastructure A strongly curated newsletter produced by Greg Ferro that contain observations and thoughts on ITInfrastructure with a networking focus that he has seen done discussed reviewed or just simply found on theInternet The format is structured but flexible (like any magazine) and will change over time as I settle into a routine ofcapturing ideas topics that seem relevant and ultimately finding patterns that seem to be interesting to youYour feedback will drives changes so dont hesitate to email with feedback or ask followup questions for thenext edition About Greg Ferro Greg is a coshyhost of the Packet Pushers Podcast a weekly podcast on Data Networking which has over 8000subscribers He blogs regularly at EtherealMindcom for the last eight years and is pretty well known thesedays He also write as an analyst for Network Computing and Gigaom Research He speaks at major events onData Centre Design SDN and life in technology He moderates panels advises customers and technologycompanies He works as a partshytime network engineer in the UK on a freelance basis Because real work configuringrouters and switches remain not only a passion but important to keeping touch with the industry Copyright copy 2015 Packet Pushers Interactive LLC All rights reserved unsubscribe from this list update subscription preferences
documents from other people so I dont need office No I dont In the end I found a way to work around this and I still dontneed to use Windows MS Windows is not worth pound150 to me when Apple isgiving me the same thing for much lower price And Linux is free
Infographic Effort to Make MulticastWork Because infographics are all the rage right now I figure I should do some too
Testing a New Podcast
As part of researching and preparing for Packet Pushers Ethan and I receivebriefing from vendors on their technology for several hours a weekGenerally we donrsquot have time to write up every briefing because of the timeit takes lacks relevance or may be a smaller point in the overall industrytimeline But we spend time discussing why what and how of what eachvendors is doing
This week Ethan and I decided to trial a podcast on the discussion Wepublished Community Show ndash Gregrsquos amp Ethanrsquos Briefing Review forFebruary 2015 We will record a few shows in the coming weeks and decideif this worth discussing into the future
You can subscribe to Community Channel in iTunes specifically on iTunesor with RSS httppacketpushersnetcategorypodcastshypostcommunityshypodcast
Internets of Interest
Collection of useful relevant or just fun places on the Internet and a bit commentary about what Ive
found interesting about them
Moving Away From EvershyInsecure Adobe Flashplayer
Googlersquos Youtube finally moves away from using Adobe Flash as the defaultmedia player For network engineers this means that blocking access toonline video got more complicated because HTML5 video streams over HTTPand previous methods of block the Streaming Video on 1975 will no longerwork But security professionals who know that the Flash player has a majorsource of exploits and vulnerabilities will be pleased Companies who useFlash super cookies to track users will still be able to use HTML5 to do thesame thing
Of course you can upgrade to a ldquoNext Generation Firewallrdquo that is able toperform deeper inspection into the HTTP stream but encryption is becomingmore common which prevents inspection An article for another day
YouTube Engineering and Developers Blog YouTube now defaults toHTML5
If Carpenters Were Programmers
On the pointless nature of technology interviews who want people withexperience on the latest hot technology
Interviewer But yoursquore not a walnut guru
Carpenter Well Irsquom a carpenter so Irsquove worked with all kinds ofwood you know and there are some differences but I think ifyoursquore a good carpenter
jasonbocknet
Boycott Docker
Docker is a good idea but there is plenty wrong with the technology Forexample the existing networking connectivity is basically NAT to eachcontainer using the Linux Bridge and there is a total lack of isolation and poorperformance Its AWFUL
This article expands to compare with VMs and integration Written with apassionate nix slant its still a good roundup from reasons why you donrsquotwant Docker There isnt enough criticism of Docker IMHO
boycott docker
HP Gloats About Cisco ONE Licensing
Cisco announced long overdue changes to its complex incoherent and costlylicensing schemes across the many different businesses For the last 5 yearseach business unit inside the Cisco conglomerate structure has been usingsoftware licensing as means to increase revenue and profits but there is nocoherent plan Each division has different ideas about what should included orexcluded Increasingly I have found it takes more and more research time todecide which licenses are needed for a given task
HP Competitive has never been subtle and they are taking the opportunity togloat about HP Networks much simpler and easier to live with strategy
At the same time Cisco is trying to dress this up as innovation ormarket leadership Itrsquos not Even with this revamp Cisco still lagsa long way behind HPrsquos licensing models which are simple andstraightforward and have been since Day 1 We donrsquot push youinto purchasing ldquosuitesrdquo with secondshyclass feature sets that youmay or may not want and didnrsquot ask for When you buy our
hardware we donrsquot tell you ldquoall the powerrsquos there but you canrsquotuse it unless you pay us extrardquo We say ldquohere you go enjoy takefull value from our productrdquo Wersquove never believed in nickelshyandshydiming
Cisco isnrsquot the only company that can be aggressive when selling it productand HP is making an attempt here What do you think HP Blogs shy Cisco tries to ease Ciscoshycreated customer pain po shy TheHP Blog Hub
US and UK Spy Agencies Stole the Crypto Keys toSIM Cards
The Intercept reports that spy agencies have stolen the root certificates forSIM cards and can transparently gather data from any smartphone
The privacy of all mobile communications mdash voice calls textmessages and Internet access mdash depends on an encryptedconnection between the cellphone and the wireless carrierrsquosnetwork using keys stored on the SIM a tiny chip smaller than apostage stamp which is inserted into the phone All mobilecommunications on the phone depend on the SIM which storesand guards the encryption keys created by companies likeGemalto SIM cards can be used to store contacts text messagesand other important data like onersquos phone number
Additionally the spy agency targeted unnamed cellular companiesrsquocore networks giving it access to ldquosales staff machines forcustomer information and network engineers machines fornetwork mapsrdquo GCHQ also claimed the ability to manipulate thebilling servers of cell companies to ldquosuppressrdquo charges in an effortto conceal the spy agencyrsquos secret actions against an individualrsquosphone Most significantly GCHQ also penetrated ldquoauthenticationserversrdquo allowing it to decrypt data and voice communications
between a targeted individualrsquos phone and his or her telecomproviderrsquos network A note accompanying the slide asserted thatthe spy agency was ldquovery happy with the data so far and [was]working through the vast quantity of productrdquo
The Great SIM Heist How Spies Stole the Keys to the EncryptionCastle
I welcome your feedback questions and corrections Send an email tohumaninfrastructurepacketpushersnet and I will write a response
Sponsorship and Advertising shy Send an email to humaninfrastructurepacketpushersnet for moreinformation About Piece of A Human Infrastructure A strongly curated newsletter produced by Greg Ferro that contain observations and thoughts on ITInfrastructure with a networking focus that he has seen done discussed reviewed or just simply found on theInternet The format is structured but flexible (like any magazine) and will change over time as I settle into a routine ofcapturing ideas topics that seem relevant and ultimately finding patterns that seem to be interesting to youYour feedback will drives changes so dont hesitate to email with feedback or ask followup questions for thenext edition About Greg Ferro Greg is a coshyhost of the Packet Pushers Podcast a weekly podcast on Data Networking which has over 8000subscribers He blogs regularly at EtherealMindcom for the last eight years and is pretty well known thesedays He also write as an analyst for Network Computing and Gigaom Research He speaks at major events onData Centre Design SDN and life in technology He moderates panels advises customers and technologycompanies He works as a partshytime network engineer in the UK on a freelance basis Because real work configuringrouters and switches remain not only a passion but important to keeping touch with the industry Copyright copy 2015 Packet Pushers Interactive LLC All rights reserved unsubscribe from this list update subscription preferences
Testing a New Podcast
As part of researching and preparing for Packet Pushers Ethan and I receivebriefing from vendors on their technology for several hours a weekGenerally we donrsquot have time to write up every briefing because of the timeit takes lacks relevance or may be a smaller point in the overall industrytimeline But we spend time discussing why what and how of what eachvendors is doing
This week Ethan and I decided to trial a podcast on the discussion Wepublished Community Show ndash Gregrsquos amp Ethanrsquos Briefing Review forFebruary 2015 We will record a few shows in the coming weeks and decideif this worth discussing into the future
You can subscribe to Community Channel in iTunes specifically on iTunesor with RSS httppacketpushersnetcategorypodcastshypostcommunityshypodcast
Internets of Interest
Collection of useful relevant or just fun places on the Internet and a bit commentary about what Ive
found interesting about them
Moving Away From EvershyInsecure Adobe Flashplayer
Googlersquos Youtube finally moves away from using Adobe Flash as the defaultmedia player For network engineers this means that blocking access toonline video got more complicated because HTML5 video streams over HTTPand previous methods of block the Streaming Video on 1975 will no longerwork But security professionals who know that the Flash player has a majorsource of exploits and vulnerabilities will be pleased Companies who useFlash super cookies to track users will still be able to use HTML5 to do thesame thing
Of course you can upgrade to a ldquoNext Generation Firewallrdquo that is able toperform deeper inspection into the HTTP stream but encryption is becomingmore common which prevents inspection An article for another day
YouTube Engineering and Developers Blog YouTube now defaults toHTML5
If Carpenters Were Programmers
On the pointless nature of technology interviews who want people withexperience on the latest hot technology
Interviewer But yoursquore not a walnut guru
Carpenter Well Irsquom a carpenter so Irsquove worked with all kinds ofwood you know and there are some differences but I think ifyoursquore a good carpenter
jasonbocknet
Boycott Docker
Docker is a good idea but there is plenty wrong with the technology Forexample the existing networking connectivity is basically NAT to eachcontainer using the Linux Bridge and there is a total lack of isolation and poorperformance Its AWFUL
This article expands to compare with VMs and integration Written with apassionate nix slant its still a good roundup from reasons why you donrsquotwant Docker There isnt enough criticism of Docker IMHO
boycott docker
HP Gloats About Cisco ONE Licensing
Cisco announced long overdue changes to its complex incoherent and costlylicensing schemes across the many different businesses For the last 5 yearseach business unit inside the Cisco conglomerate structure has been usingsoftware licensing as means to increase revenue and profits but there is nocoherent plan Each division has different ideas about what should included orexcluded Increasingly I have found it takes more and more research time todecide which licenses are needed for a given task
HP Competitive has never been subtle and they are taking the opportunity togloat about HP Networks much simpler and easier to live with strategy
At the same time Cisco is trying to dress this up as innovation ormarket leadership Itrsquos not Even with this revamp Cisco still lagsa long way behind HPrsquos licensing models which are simple andstraightforward and have been since Day 1 We donrsquot push youinto purchasing ldquosuitesrdquo with secondshyclass feature sets that youmay or may not want and didnrsquot ask for When you buy our
hardware we donrsquot tell you ldquoall the powerrsquos there but you canrsquotuse it unless you pay us extrardquo We say ldquohere you go enjoy takefull value from our productrdquo Wersquove never believed in nickelshyandshydiming
Cisco isnrsquot the only company that can be aggressive when selling it productand HP is making an attempt here What do you think HP Blogs shy Cisco tries to ease Ciscoshycreated customer pain po shy TheHP Blog Hub
US and UK Spy Agencies Stole the Crypto Keys toSIM Cards
The Intercept reports that spy agencies have stolen the root certificates forSIM cards and can transparently gather data from any smartphone
The privacy of all mobile communications mdash voice calls textmessages and Internet access mdash depends on an encryptedconnection between the cellphone and the wireless carrierrsquosnetwork using keys stored on the SIM a tiny chip smaller than apostage stamp which is inserted into the phone All mobilecommunications on the phone depend on the SIM which storesand guards the encryption keys created by companies likeGemalto SIM cards can be used to store contacts text messagesand other important data like onersquos phone number
Additionally the spy agency targeted unnamed cellular companiesrsquocore networks giving it access to ldquosales staff machines forcustomer information and network engineers machines fornetwork mapsrdquo GCHQ also claimed the ability to manipulate thebilling servers of cell companies to ldquosuppressrdquo charges in an effortto conceal the spy agencyrsquos secret actions against an individualrsquosphone Most significantly GCHQ also penetrated ldquoauthenticationserversrdquo allowing it to decrypt data and voice communications
between a targeted individualrsquos phone and his or her telecomproviderrsquos network A note accompanying the slide asserted thatthe spy agency was ldquovery happy with the data so far and [was]working through the vast quantity of productrdquo
The Great SIM Heist How Spies Stole the Keys to the EncryptionCastle
I welcome your feedback questions and corrections Send an email tohumaninfrastructurepacketpushersnet and I will write a response
Sponsorship and Advertising shy Send an email to humaninfrastructurepacketpushersnet for moreinformation About Piece of A Human Infrastructure A strongly curated newsletter produced by Greg Ferro that contain observations and thoughts on ITInfrastructure with a networking focus that he has seen done discussed reviewed or just simply found on theInternet The format is structured but flexible (like any magazine) and will change over time as I settle into a routine ofcapturing ideas topics that seem relevant and ultimately finding patterns that seem to be interesting to youYour feedback will drives changes so dont hesitate to email with feedback or ask followup questions for thenext edition About Greg Ferro Greg is a coshyhost of the Packet Pushers Podcast a weekly podcast on Data Networking which has over 8000subscribers He blogs regularly at EtherealMindcom for the last eight years and is pretty well known thesedays He also write as an analyst for Network Computing and Gigaom Research He speaks at major events onData Centre Design SDN and life in technology He moderates panels advises customers and technologycompanies He works as a partshytime network engineer in the UK on a freelance basis Because real work configuringrouters and switches remain not only a passion but important to keeping touch with the industry Copyright copy 2015 Packet Pushers Interactive LLC All rights reserved unsubscribe from this list update subscription preferences
Collection of useful relevant or just fun places on the Internet and a bit commentary about what Ive
found interesting about them
Moving Away From EvershyInsecure Adobe Flashplayer
Googlersquos Youtube finally moves away from using Adobe Flash as the defaultmedia player For network engineers this means that blocking access toonline video got more complicated because HTML5 video streams over HTTPand previous methods of block the Streaming Video on 1975 will no longerwork But security professionals who know that the Flash player has a majorsource of exploits and vulnerabilities will be pleased Companies who useFlash super cookies to track users will still be able to use HTML5 to do thesame thing
Of course you can upgrade to a ldquoNext Generation Firewallrdquo that is able toperform deeper inspection into the HTTP stream but encryption is becomingmore common which prevents inspection An article for another day
YouTube Engineering and Developers Blog YouTube now defaults toHTML5
If Carpenters Were Programmers
On the pointless nature of technology interviews who want people withexperience on the latest hot technology
Interviewer But yoursquore not a walnut guru
Carpenter Well Irsquom a carpenter so Irsquove worked with all kinds ofwood you know and there are some differences but I think ifyoursquore a good carpenter
jasonbocknet
Boycott Docker
Docker is a good idea but there is plenty wrong with the technology Forexample the existing networking connectivity is basically NAT to eachcontainer using the Linux Bridge and there is a total lack of isolation and poorperformance Its AWFUL
This article expands to compare with VMs and integration Written with apassionate nix slant its still a good roundup from reasons why you donrsquotwant Docker There isnt enough criticism of Docker IMHO
boycott docker
HP Gloats About Cisco ONE Licensing
Cisco announced long overdue changes to its complex incoherent and costlylicensing schemes across the many different businesses For the last 5 yearseach business unit inside the Cisco conglomerate structure has been usingsoftware licensing as means to increase revenue and profits but there is nocoherent plan Each division has different ideas about what should included orexcluded Increasingly I have found it takes more and more research time todecide which licenses are needed for a given task
HP Competitive has never been subtle and they are taking the opportunity togloat about HP Networks much simpler and easier to live with strategy
At the same time Cisco is trying to dress this up as innovation ormarket leadership Itrsquos not Even with this revamp Cisco still lagsa long way behind HPrsquos licensing models which are simple andstraightforward and have been since Day 1 We donrsquot push youinto purchasing ldquosuitesrdquo with secondshyclass feature sets that youmay or may not want and didnrsquot ask for When you buy our
hardware we donrsquot tell you ldquoall the powerrsquos there but you canrsquotuse it unless you pay us extrardquo We say ldquohere you go enjoy takefull value from our productrdquo Wersquove never believed in nickelshyandshydiming
Cisco isnrsquot the only company that can be aggressive when selling it productand HP is making an attempt here What do you think HP Blogs shy Cisco tries to ease Ciscoshycreated customer pain po shy TheHP Blog Hub
US and UK Spy Agencies Stole the Crypto Keys toSIM Cards
The Intercept reports that spy agencies have stolen the root certificates forSIM cards and can transparently gather data from any smartphone
The privacy of all mobile communications mdash voice calls textmessages and Internet access mdash depends on an encryptedconnection between the cellphone and the wireless carrierrsquosnetwork using keys stored on the SIM a tiny chip smaller than apostage stamp which is inserted into the phone All mobilecommunications on the phone depend on the SIM which storesand guards the encryption keys created by companies likeGemalto SIM cards can be used to store contacts text messagesand other important data like onersquos phone number
Additionally the spy agency targeted unnamed cellular companiesrsquocore networks giving it access to ldquosales staff machines forcustomer information and network engineers machines fornetwork mapsrdquo GCHQ also claimed the ability to manipulate thebilling servers of cell companies to ldquosuppressrdquo charges in an effortto conceal the spy agencyrsquos secret actions against an individualrsquosphone Most significantly GCHQ also penetrated ldquoauthenticationserversrdquo allowing it to decrypt data and voice communications
between a targeted individualrsquos phone and his or her telecomproviderrsquos network A note accompanying the slide asserted thatthe spy agency was ldquovery happy with the data so far and [was]working through the vast quantity of productrdquo
The Great SIM Heist How Spies Stole the Keys to the EncryptionCastle
I welcome your feedback questions and corrections Send an email tohumaninfrastructurepacketpushersnet and I will write a response
Sponsorship and Advertising shy Send an email to humaninfrastructurepacketpushersnet for moreinformation About Piece of A Human Infrastructure A strongly curated newsletter produced by Greg Ferro that contain observations and thoughts on ITInfrastructure with a networking focus that he has seen done discussed reviewed or just simply found on theInternet The format is structured but flexible (like any magazine) and will change over time as I settle into a routine ofcapturing ideas topics that seem relevant and ultimately finding patterns that seem to be interesting to youYour feedback will drives changes so dont hesitate to email with feedback or ask followup questions for thenext edition About Greg Ferro Greg is a coshyhost of the Packet Pushers Podcast a weekly podcast on Data Networking which has over 8000subscribers He blogs regularly at EtherealMindcom for the last eight years and is pretty well known thesedays He also write as an analyst for Network Computing and Gigaom Research He speaks at major events onData Centre Design SDN and life in technology He moderates panels advises customers and technologycompanies He works as a partshytime network engineer in the UK on a freelance basis Because real work configuringrouters and switches remain not only a passion but important to keeping touch with the industry Copyright copy 2015 Packet Pushers Interactive LLC All rights reserved unsubscribe from this list update subscription preferences
Boycott Docker
Docker is a good idea but there is plenty wrong with the technology Forexample the existing networking connectivity is basically NAT to eachcontainer using the Linux Bridge and there is a total lack of isolation and poorperformance Its AWFUL
This article expands to compare with VMs and integration Written with apassionate nix slant its still a good roundup from reasons why you donrsquotwant Docker There isnt enough criticism of Docker IMHO
boycott docker
HP Gloats About Cisco ONE Licensing
Cisco announced long overdue changes to its complex incoherent and costlylicensing schemes across the many different businesses For the last 5 yearseach business unit inside the Cisco conglomerate structure has been usingsoftware licensing as means to increase revenue and profits but there is nocoherent plan Each division has different ideas about what should included orexcluded Increasingly I have found it takes more and more research time todecide which licenses are needed for a given task
HP Competitive has never been subtle and they are taking the opportunity togloat about HP Networks much simpler and easier to live with strategy
At the same time Cisco is trying to dress this up as innovation ormarket leadership Itrsquos not Even with this revamp Cisco still lagsa long way behind HPrsquos licensing models which are simple andstraightforward and have been since Day 1 We donrsquot push youinto purchasing ldquosuitesrdquo with secondshyclass feature sets that youmay or may not want and didnrsquot ask for When you buy our
hardware we donrsquot tell you ldquoall the powerrsquos there but you canrsquotuse it unless you pay us extrardquo We say ldquohere you go enjoy takefull value from our productrdquo Wersquove never believed in nickelshyandshydiming
Cisco isnrsquot the only company that can be aggressive when selling it productand HP is making an attempt here What do you think HP Blogs shy Cisco tries to ease Ciscoshycreated customer pain po shy TheHP Blog Hub
US and UK Spy Agencies Stole the Crypto Keys toSIM Cards
The Intercept reports that spy agencies have stolen the root certificates forSIM cards and can transparently gather data from any smartphone
The privacy of all mobile communications mdash voice calls textmessages and Internet access mdash depends on an encryptedconnection between the cellphone and the wireless carrierrsquosnetwork using keys stored on the SIM a tiny chip smaller than apostage stamp which is inserted into the phone All mobilecommunications on the phone depend on the SIM which storesand guards the encryption keys created by companies likeGemalto SIM cards can be used to store contacts text messagesand other important data like onersquos phone number
Additionally the spy agency targeted unnamed cellular companiesrsquocore networks giving it access to ldquosales staff machines forcustomer information and network engineers machines fornetwork mapsrdquo GCHQ also claimed the ability to manipulate thebilling servers of cell companies to ldquosuppressrdquo charges in an effortto conceal the spy agencyrsquos secret actions against an individualrsquosphone Most significantly GCHQ also penetrated ldquoauthenticationserversrdquo allowing it to decrypt data and voice communications
between a targeted individualrsquos phone and his or her telecomproviderrsquos network A note accompanying the slide asserted thatthe spy agency was ldquovery happy with the data so far and [was]working through the vast quantity of productrdquo
The Great SIM Heist How Spies Stole the Keys to the EncryptionCastle
I welcome your feedback questions and corrections Send an email tohumaninfrastructurepacketpushersnet and I will write a response
Sponsorship and Advertising shy Send an email to humaninfrastructurepacketpushersnet for moreinformation About Piece of A Human Infrastructure A strongly curated newsletter produced by Greg Ferro that contain observations and thoughts on ITInfrastructure with a networking focus that he has seen done discussed reviewed or just simply found on theInternet The format is structured but flexible (like any magazine) and will change over time as I settle into a routine ofcapturing ideas topics that seem relevant and ultimately finding patterns that seem to be interesting to youYour feedback will drives changes so dont hesitate to email with feedback or ask followup questions for thenext edition About Greg Ferro Greg is a coshyhost of the Packet Pushers Podcast a weekly podcast on Data Networking which has over 8000subscribers He blogs regularly at EtherealMindcom for the last eight years and is pretty well known thesedays He also write as an analyst for Network Computing and Gigaom Research He speaks at major events onData Centre Design SDN and life in technology He moderates panels advises customers and technologycompanies He works as a partshytime network engineer in the UK on a freelance basis Because real work configuringrouters and switches remain not only a passion but important to keeping touch with the industry Copyright copy 2015 Packet Pushers Interactive LLC All rights reserved unsubscribe from this list update subscription preferences
hardware we donrsquot tell you ldquoall the powerrsquos there but you canrsquotuse it unless you pay us extrardquo We say ldquohere you go enjoy takefull value from our productrdquo Wersquove never believed in nickelshyandshydiming
Cisco isnrsquot the only company that can be aggressive when selling it productand HP is making an attempt here What do you think HP Blogs shy Cisco tries to ease Ciscoshycreated customer pain po shy TheHP Blog Hub
US and UK Spy Agencies Stole the Crypto Keys toSIM Cards
The Intercept reports that spy agencies have stolen the root certificates forSIM cards and can transparently gather data from any smartphone
The privacy of all mobile communications mdash voice calls textmessages and Internet access mdash depends on an encryptedconnection between the cellphone and the wireless carrierrsquosnetwork using keys stored on the SIM a tiny chip smaller than apostage stamp which is inserted into the phone All mobilecommunications on the phone depend on the SIM which storesand guards the encryption keys created by companies likeGemalto SIM cards can be used to store contacts text messagesand other important data like onersquos phone number
Additionally the spy agency targeted unnamed cellular companiesrsquocore networks giving it access to ldquosales staff machines forcustomer information and network engineers machines fornetwork mapsrdquo GCHQ also claimed the ability to manipulate thebilling servers of cell companies to ldquosuppressrdquo charges in an effortto conceal the spy agencyrsquos secret actions against an individualrsquosphone Most significantly GCHQ also penetrated ldquoauthenticationserversrdquo allowing it to decrypt data and voice communications
between a targeted individualrsquos phone and his or her telecomproviderrsquos network A note accompanying the slide asserted thatthe spy agency was ldquovery happy with the data so far and [was]working through the vast quantity of productrdquo
The Great SIM Heist How Spies Stole the Keys to the EncryptionCastle
I welcome your feedback questions and corrections Send an email tohumaninfrastructurepacketpushersnet and I will write a response
Sponsorship and Advertising shy Send an email to humaninfrastructurepacketpushersnet for moreinformation About Piece of A Human Infrastructure A strongly curated newsletter produced by Greg Ferro that contain observations and thoughts on ITInfrastructure with a networking focus that he has seen done discussed reviewed or just simply found on theInternet The format is structured but flexible (like any magazine) and will change over time as I settle into a routine ofcapturing ideas topics that seem relevant and ultimately finding patterns that seem to be interesting to youYour feedback will drives changes so dont hesitate to email with feedback or ask followup questions for thenext edition About Greg Ferro Greg is a coshyhost of the Packet Pushers Podcast a weekly podcast on Data Networking which has over 8000subscribers He blogs regularly at EtherealMindcom for the last eight years and is pretty well known thesedays He also write as an analyst for Network Computing and Gigaom Research He speaks at major events onData Centre Design SDN and life in technology He moderates panels advises customers and technologycompanies He works as a partshytime network engineer in the UK on a freelance basis Because real work configuringrouters and switches remain not only a passion but important to keeping touch with the industry Copyright copy 2015 Packet Pushers Interactive LLC All rights reserved unsubscribe from this list update subscription preferences
between a targeted individualrsquos phone and his or her telecomproviderrsquos network A note accompanying the slide asserted thatthe spy agency was ldquovery happy with the data so far and [was]working through the vast quantity of productrdquo
The Great SIM Heist How Spies Stole the Keys to the EncryptionCastle
I welcome your feedback questions and corrections Send an email tohumaninfrastructurepacketpushersnet and I will write a response
Sponsorship and Advertising shy Send an email to humaninfrastructurepacketpushersnet for moreinformation About Piece of A Human Infrastructure A strongly curated newsletter produced by Greg Ferro that contain observations and thoughts on ITInfrastructure with a networking focus that he has seen done discussed reviewed or just simply found on theInternet The format is structured but flexible (like any magazine) and will change over time as I settle into a routine ofcapturing ideas topics that seem relevant and ultimately finding patterns that seem to be interesting to youYour feedback will drives changes so dont hesitate to email with feedback or ask followup questions for thenext edition About Greg Ferro Greg is a coshyhost of the Packet Pushers Podcast a weekly podcast on Data Networking which has over 8000subscribers He blogs regularly at EtherealMindcom for the last eight years and is pretty well known thesedays He also write as an analyst for Network Computing and Gigaom Research He speaks at major events onData Centre Design SDN and life in technology He moderates panels advises customers and technologycompanies He works as a partshytime network engineer in the UK on a freelance basis Because real work configuringrouters and switches remain not only a passion but important to keeping touch with the industry Copyright copy 2015 Packet Pushers Interactive LLC All rights reserved unsubscribe from this list update subscription preferences