This post originally appeared in the Packet Pushers’ Human Infrastructure newsletter, a weekly mailing of essays, links to technical blogs and IT news, and whatever else think is interesting. Subscribe for free here. Let’s say I invent an autonomous mobile robot. It can lift heavy items for you, wash your dishes, do your grocery shopping,…
A Look At Broadcom’s Jericho3-AI Ethernet Fabric: Schedules, Credits, And Cells
Broadcom has come up with some interesting mechanisms to address the challenges of building an Ethernet-based fabric that supports AI workloads. These mechanisms, which include a scheduling framework, cells, and credits, are intended to minimize congestion, latency, and dropped frames or packets in the fabric. In this post I talk about what I learned at…
Options For Connecting Your Private Cloud
The impulse to move absolute everything to the public cloud is coming to an end. Many companies are re-evaluating their strategies and adopting a hybrid model by bringing or migrating their workloads from the cloud to on-premises, mostly in the IaaS space. The main reasons companies are re-evaluating public cloud are cost, wanting total control…
Writing An IETF Draft: Mandatory Sections And Language
When writing an IETF draft you need to delve into the security considerations of your proposal and contact the IANA–these are mandatory sections. You also need to be precise and clear with your language.
Kubernetes Components: The Basics
Whether you run Kubernetes on-prem, in the cloud, or a combination of the two, one thing holds true – there is always a Control Plane element and a Worker Node element. Without them, Kubernetes wouldn’t exist. This post looks at the Control Plane and the Worker Node, including which components are in each, why each…
The Packet Pushers Welcome CEO Jennifer Tribe
We’re excited to announce Jennifer Tribe has joined Packet Pushers Interactive as our first-ever CEO! Jennifer’s mission is to help grow the Packet Pushers podcast network, increase our visibility and reach in the tech community, and bring in new listeners and clients. Jennifer’s skill set and experience are ideal for this position. She’s been a…
Do We Really Want Creativity In IT?
This post originally appeared in the Packet Pushers’ Human Infrastructure newsletter. You can subscribe for free and see every back issue here. And we don’t share your contact details with anyone else because we’re selfish like that. Creativity sits among the group of attributes, including teamwork and communication, that employers say they most desire. For…
AskJJX: How To Handle Rogue APs Without Getting Arrested
AskJJX: “What’s the best way to find and disable rogue APs on the network? We had an audit finding and got our hand slapped.” Ahhh, I love this question for so many reasons. First, because my answer to this today, in 2023, is very different than my answer would have been years ago. You may…
AskJJX: Help! Office Wi-Fi is So Bad An Intern Is Following The CEO Around With An AP
AskJJX: How do you set up and configure Wi-Fi for a two-level office in a crowded office building area (downtown San Francisco across from Moscone Center) with concrete poles all over the place? It was a nightmare. APs were dropping traffic like flies. We were at the point of almost having an intern follow the…
Is The OSI Model Good For Understanding How Networks Work? Not Really
Looking back at my career in network engineering, beyond some basic concepts and naming conventions, I cannot remember using the OSI model once. Not for troubleshooting, not for protocol design. I have used the concept of layering, but never the OSI model specifically.
Writing Your Own Performance Evaluation: Tips To Make It Not Suck
Managers often ask employees to write a first draft of their performance review. If you’re expected to draft a performance summary, here are a few ideas to mitigate the stress of self evaluation and to help your manager help you.
Pods, Plans & Policies: Top Five Tips For Kubernetes Security
Because you may not have many months to set up a proper security implementation for your Kubernetes environment, this blog post will go over a few key security implementations that you can get done in 2-4 weeks depending on team size.
Prisma Access Outperforms Against Cobalt Strike Attacks
The following sponsored blog post was written by Anupam Upadhyaya at Palo Alto Networks. We thank Palo Alto Networks for being a sponsor. Palo Alto Networks is the leading vendor in preventing Cobalt Strike C2 communication and blocked 99.2% of tested attacks, with the next leading vendor blocking only 17% of attacks, as cited in a…
When Making Bets on SASE, Don’t Count on Native SD-WAN Monitoring Tools for Help
The following post is by Jeremy Rossbach, Chief Technical Evangelist at Broadcom. We thank Broadcom for being a sponsor. I’ve been preaching the same thing for years: To overcome the challenges of modern network complexity and successfully transform your networks, you need modern network monitoring data. Monitor the user experience and the health of every…
Writing An IETF Draft: Document Streams And Document Status
So far in this series we’ve discussed the history of the IETF, some of the tools you might want to use when building an IETF submission, and document formatting. There are other seemingly mystical concepts in the IETF process as well—for instance, what is a “document stream,” and what is a document’s “status?” Let’s look…
People Aren’t Stupid Just Because They Don’t Understand Tech
As technical people, we spend immense time and energy mastering the nuances of specific technologies. Esoteric knowledge is our currency, and we often measure our personal value against the yardstick of technical nuance. And sometimes (maybe lots of times) we gauge other people with the same yardstick, and dismiss those who don’t measure up. This…
Kubernetes Security And Networking 8: Loading The Cillium CNI – Video
Container Network Interfaces (CNIs) are plug-ins that enable networking capabilities. This video provides a brief overview of the Cillium CNI and the importance of network policies. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzswIJpdPtY You can subscribe to the Packet Pushers’ YouTube channel for more videos as they are published. It’s a diverse a mix of content from Ethan and Greg, plus…
Ask JJX: How Can I Stop Users From Joining Personal Devices To Our Network Using Their AD Credentials?
Messy RADIUS policies and misconfigurations may be allowing users to join personal devices to your network. Jennifer Minella provides a quick overview of RADIUS and 802.1x, common holes, and three options for filling them in this installment of her “Ask JJX” series.
Kubernetes Security And Networking 7: Securing Kubernetes Manifests – Video
There’s lot of places to focus on application security, but don’t forget to scan your Kubernetes manifests! This video takes you step-by-step through scanning your repository using Kubescape. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwF-JoIQRTA You can subscribe to the Packet Pushers’ YouTube channel for more videos as they are published. It’s a diverse a mix of content from Ethan and…
Introducing SD-WAN With Integrated IoT
The following sponsored blog post was written by Shankar Ramachandran at Palo Alto Networks. We thank Palo Alto Networks for being a sponsor. Internet of things (IoT) devices are now an integral part of any organization’s network. Smart lights, cameras, card readers, printers, etc., are critical to the day-to-day operations of branch offices and retail…
My Notes on OCI’s Multicloud Certification Exam
First thing first; full disclosure; Readers should know I am an employee of Oracle cloud, although since my teams have nothing to do with the certification teams, this blog will demonstrate a candidate’s perspective. Last week, pretty much as soon as the first Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) multicloud exam became available, I was excited to…
The Case For IT Unionization
This post originally appeared in the Packet Pushers’ Human Infrastructure newsletter. You can subscribe for free here. We never share or sell your details to anyone. One unforeseen event following the COVID-19 pandemic has been an uptick in attempts to organize workers. Starbucks and Amazon warehouse employees are two high-profile examples. Though private-sector union membership…
CDP and LLDP Neighbor Parser – neighborparser.com
As a network engineer, I’ve made heavy use of the show cdp neighbors and show lldp neighbors commands to discover the physical topology of a network without having to physically trace cables. While these are very useful commands, their output is not very human-readable. I built neighborparser.com as a quick-and-easy tool to turn the semi-structured data from these commands…
Build Your K8s Environment For The Real World Part 2 – Day One Ops
Part one of this blog post series explored Day Zero Ops, which covers all the planning for how you want your environment to look. Before you can implement, you must plan. Oftentimes, engineers try implementing without proper planning, which results in tech debt later on. Once you’ve set up a robust plan, it’s time to…
Bridging The Gap Between ‘Default Yes’ And ‘Default No’
I’ve encountered two basic philosophies for responding to requests to join a project. One philosophy I’ll describe as “Default Yes”. The argument goes, “If someone brings you a request, say yes! You only grow with challenges and if you say no too much, people will stop asking.” The second philosophy could be called “Default No.”…
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