I wrote about such ideas over two years ago. it seems the concept of offloading packet forwarding from CPU to GPU may have some merits, and if you’re interested in that - take a look at packetshader. still however, hardware config needed to achieve that kind of performance feat is quite expensive. it demonstrates however that GPU, next to FPGA experiments, can also be viable way of forwarding in high-performance packet forwarding/routing based on PCs. ...
everybody talks about IPv6 and still too few of us take it seriously. on polish mailing list dedicated to implementing IPv6 we get steady series of IPv6 prefix announcements, but real services available over this protocol is low. as a proof of concept for upcoming PLNOG, I just launched full network stack (Cisco 7200VXR with NPE-G1, ASA 5500-X, Catalyst 3750) and service (FreeBSD) for dual stack operation. IPv6 should be preferred, and while there’s still some things to tune down (like for example, DNS resolver in Windows XP), it should work. ...
…it’s already past (it’s quote from famous polish comedy - Boys don’t cry). you can get much better than that. you simply ‘restart whole internet using secret team of key bearers’: Cards you see are keys to global internetwork. There are seven of them and may be used to restart internet in the event of Earth-shattering cataclysm. Yes, we have to be prepared for anything. In the event of global outage, DNSSEC system would be damaged. You wouldn’t be able to check if URL really leads to the displayed label, and world would fall to chaos and anarchy. But then, Secret Group Of Key Bearers would appear and save the world. ...
it was a rule some time ago, right now its rare luxury - to have time to sit down with book that’s not about networking and spend time reading it from start to finish. i got back to most of Stanislaw Lem books, Anthony Beevor monography of both Berlin and Stalingrad battles. i’m still in front of Norman Davies ‘Uprising ‘44’ (i’m ashamed to admit, but no, I haven’t read it yet). also, i can recommend “www.1939.com.pl”, “www.1944.waw.pl”, “Mayor”, “Steel Curtain”, “Caucasian Epicenter”. i also had great time re-reading again “On the Beach”. ...
…doesn’t have to be totally banal. it’s much more performant (300kpps, around the NPE300 performance from 7200!), so i upgraded my home 1803w to 1941w. as there are no readily available examples for complete config of the router (wired + WLAN), I decided to take the case in my hands and produce some examples. you may find them here.
those of you frequently visiting my home site noticed that it wasn’t available for some time. unfortunately, that’s because of interesting RAID 5 failure in my server that hosts also my web page. FreeBSD relentlessly tried to serve web traffic from filesystem that was failing apart because of hardware problems, but then, 30 minutes after first failure, second hard disk failed in the same array! temperature was finely tuned, but it seems that after 5 years of continous work they had to fail. if anyone’s interested those were identical Seagate HDDs. ...
plnog, plnog and… gone. it looks like we have actually grown into the most serious and largest independent conference dedicated to people working on service provider networks in Poland - though I’m not going to fight anyone on the number of participants, this additional 100 people on each subsequent edition of PLNOG (we counted 395 participants this time!) speaks for itself. to the point that I’ve met many people for the first time in my life :) ...
…tool for documenting and mapping networks. also, short piece on deconfliction. Google to enlist NSA to help in the cyberdefence, and short brief on efficient meetings from great blog (read it!) winter break… aaand it’s gone.
there’s really almost nothing much simpler than starting to use IPv6. first of all, all major OS support IPv6 today. most of them are running it out of the box. second of all, tunnel brokers are available everywhere, so while i haven’t had luck with sixxs (they didn’t respond after weeks of waiting), using Hurricane Electric was easy and took like seconds. friendly “wizard” will walk you through and then even show example of configuration for your device. you’ll get your own /64 (freebie under Christmas tree!), and option to request additional /48. should be enough even for bigger home labs :) ...
not so long ago as a joke I had a sad vision of what will happen when in the end all our data, including DNA, will be stored in a digital form. the company(-ies) that store them just goes bankrupt and sells them as the most valuable resources. we did it standing in the queue at the airport in Washington, where to get to the US we had to get our photo taken (which was compared with the previous ones) and pass their fingerprints closer to the unidentified governmental agenda created as part of the Bush government’s panic and hysterical movements after the attacks of 11th of September. all of that in the so-called Patriot Act. ...