Decades of Technology Expertise to Deliver Solutions that Exceed Industry Standards
Republished from Corero DDoS Blog:
The Internet has a very long history of utilizing mechanisms that may breathe new life into older technologies, stretching it out so that newer technologies may be delayed or obviated altogether. IPv4 addressing, and the well known depletion associated with it, is one such area that has seen a plethora of mechanisms employed in order to give it more shelf life.
Continue reading “Carrier Grade NAT and the DoS Consequences”
I’ve always been at odds with the recommendation in RFC 3177 towards allocating /48 IPv6 prefixes to end-sites. To me this seemed rather short-sighted, akin to saying that 640K of memory should be enough for anybody. It’s essentially equivalent to giving out /12s in the IPv4 world which in this day and age might seem completely ridiculous, but let us not forget that in the early days of IPv4 it wasn’t uncommon to get a /16 or even a /8 in some cases.
Granted, I know there are quite a few more usable bits in IPv6 than there are in IPv4, but allocating huge swaths of address space simply because it’s there and we haven’t thought of all the myriad ways it could be used in the future just seems outright wasteful. Continue reading “IETF Provides New Guidance on IPv6 End-Site Addressing”
Today, I received a very disturbing email on NANOG which was forwarded from a recipient on the Global Environment Watch (GEW) mailing list. If this is true, we all need to take steps to make an orderly and smooth transition to IPv6 as quickly as possible, lest we suffer from the harmful effects described in this email.
From: Stephen H. Inden
To: Global Environment Watch (GEW) mailing list
Date: Fri, 1 Apr 2011 00:19:08 +0200
Subject: IPv4 Address Exhaustion Effects on the Earth
At a ceremony held on February 3, 2011 the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) allocated the remaining last five /8s of IPv4 address space to the Regional Internet Registries (RIRs). With this action, the free pool of available IPv4 addresses was completely depleted. Continue reading “IPv4 Address Exhaustion Causing Harmful Effects on the Earth”
During the reign of the Roman Empire, it was said that all roads led to Rome. While these roads facilitated free-trade and were essential to the expansive growth of the Roman Empire, they also introduced a double-edged sword by creating convenient new avenues that could easily be maneuvered by the Empire’s enemies against its best interests.
It could be said that similar corollaries and conclusions could be drawn to that of the Internet, a project initially developed by the United States through the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA or DARPA) in the late 20th century. As we continue to move into the 21st century, the Internet is emerging as the new battlefield on the International stage. As Internet connectivity becomes commoditized and the barrier to entry is further reduced, it becomes easier for potential adversaries of the United States to wield the power of the Internet to launch attacks against the US infrastructure and its National interests, disrupting the flow of information and leaving destruction in its wake. It is becoming increasingly possible for our adversaries to not only cause extraordinary economic havoc, but also loss of life as critical services such as E911 and other emergency services become more dependent upon the Internet. At the same time a perfect storm is brewing because the resources currently allocated to preparing ourselves for this advancing threat are stretched to the limit and largely focused on obsolete technologies that are considerably out of date.
On August 10th, 2010, in McLean, VA, a series of panelists will discuss this ever-increasing reality and the potential that wars in the future won’t be fought so much on the traditional battlefield but rather electronically targeting critical components of a national infrastructure. The panelists will discuss what has been done by the US Government to secure certain core components of our national infrastructure, what remains to be done, and will also serve as a “call to arms” to better secure our national cyber landscape. The members of this panel have all been intimately involved within the Networking Security industry for many years and are engaged in the implementation of their solutions at the ground level. Their insights will provide invaluable viewpoints regarding this very real and emerging threat and will provide invaluable experience to the attendees of the presentation.
For more information, please take a look at the Event details at http://cyberwarfare.eventbrite.com/. This event will be hosted by the Capital Technology Management Hub and will be moderated by Stefan Fouant.
IS-IS: Deployment in IP Networks
by Russ White, Alvaro Retana
Hardcover: 320 pages
Publisher: Pearson Education
ISBN-13: 978-0201657722
Better off choosing an alternative selection
As IS-IS is one of the more esoteric protocols, understood only by a few people in large scale ISP environments, I thought this book would be a welcome addition to my library as there isn’t much else on the market covering this protocol. There are of course ISO 10589 and RFC 1195 which covers these protocols, but seeing as this is a short book I thought it might be able to shed some light on an otherwise complex protocol.
In reviewing this book I’ve come up disappointed in general. There are certainly a few golden nuggets and I give the book a couple of stars just for attempting to bridge the gap between the purely theoretical and the purely vendor specific. However, the book comes up short on most other points. Often times I found myself wanting to scrap this book in favor of some of the other selections on the market, but since I have respect for these authors I read the whole book hoping that they might be able to redeem themselves by the time I finished.
Obviously the authors have a great deal of knowledge about the subject, and I don’t fault them entirely. The quality of the editing is poor with many grammatical and syntactical errors littered throughout the text. There are abundant instances throughout the book where the diagrams used do not match the text describing them. I was rather disappointed because I usually find that Addison-Wesley publishes some of the best texts on the market.
All in all, I thought this book could have been a lot better than it was. After all, these authors have several other titles under their belt, most notably “Advanced IP Network Design”. But in this case, I would say that you are better off looking for other similar titles available on the market, such as Jeff Doyle’s “Routing TCP/IP Volume 1” or “The Complete IS-IS Routing Protocol” by Hannes Gredler and Walter Goralski.
I’ve given this tutorial quite a few times now and several people have asked me to make it publicly available. This is very much geared towards non-technical folks who would like to have a better understanding of how routing in the Internet works.
It covers a brief history of the Internet and evolution of dynamic routing protocols, as well as high-level coverage of link-state vs. distance vector IGPs in addition to discussing EGPs and their role in the exchange of routing information between Autonomous Systems. It also has a few slides on QoS, MPLS, and IPv6.
I would still like to make some modifications to a few of the slides as well as adding more content around MPLS and the future of IP. I will also eventually add a voice-over to turn this into a true slide-cast. In the meantime, I’ve put it up on my slideshare account for those of you who would like to have access to it.
Way back in 1987, before there was the the “Internet Protocol Journal” and other notable publications which cover various aspects of Internet Technologies, there was “ConneXions – The Interoperability Report“. At the time, aside from reading RFCs or Internet-Drafts for more information on various protocols, this publication was the defacto resource for informative analysis of various protocols and their operation. A quick glance at the articles and you’ll see long-time industry heavy-hitters such as Doug Comer, Jon Postel, and Vint Cerf listed as the authors. This is an invaluable resource for those of you who want to understand the history and evolution of various Internet protocols commonly in use today.