Posts

if you happen to have more than one internet connection and they have different usable bandwidths - which is no longer a rarity today - it becomes interesting element in network design. how would you use these links optimally? i have to admit, that i was provoked to sit down and write down this series of post by Marcin Ślęczek post on ccie.pl forum. Marcin is CEO of networkers.pl but by heart, he’s network engineer and sometimes fights with interesting problems. although I already had in my head something like solution to the problem I was struggling with in my home network, the inability to solve Marcin’s problem immediately provoked me to describe the problem and potential solutions from the inside out. ...

Raspberry Pi 4 that comes originally without any case, or can be bought with original case, can bring you headaches. it’s absolute great and genius computer (never ask me how many I own… ;) ) in version four has really very fast CPU - Broadcom BCM2711. it contains four ARM Cortex A72 cores clocked with up to 1.5GHz and dedicated GPU complex. problems people all around internet report problems however with overheating of this little beast, and what’s more - problems with getting stable 4k 60Hz video output (just remember, there are two video outputs, but 60Hz is only achievable on the socket next to USB-C power supply). ...

…but tools have to be used responsibly. first of all, short disclaimer - I’d like to make it perfectly clear before we go into this long piece, that I’m a: …big fan of discussing merits of technology and technology overall. I love technology. I believe having opportunity to create networks, solutions that really connect people and give us chance to exchange information is something I could do for the rest of my life, with full focus and commitment. ...

I recently had a chance to finish reading fantastic book covering disinformation war happening between USSR and USA during Cold War - Active Measures. it’s frightening how Soviet Russia, and by extension todays Russia, mastered skill of disinformation and manipulation of public opinion. and at the same time, reading it helps you spot influence over todays anti- and pro- movements, like antivacciners, anti-5G, anti-whatever. i’m not saying they’re all inspired and sponsored by Russia (or by whomever), but after reading this book you can easy see into how those movements start, evolve and get exploited. it’s just so easy to spark doubt in uneducated minds, and then let them consume “verified facts” and “in the internets”. ...

I was able to finally reach Aleksander Poniewierski SPEED book in my queue of books to read. if you don’t know Aleksander, you should - and this book will give you a lot of good answers for “why?”. I can finally attest that indeed that’s great, short, and to the point piece providing high level view of what and how drives fourth revolution, and what exactly is that revolution about. ...

as you may have read recently I was playing with open source routing protocol packages again. from pure CLI familiarity reasons, I kept myself to FRRouting, which is evolution of Quagga, which itself is evolution of Zebra. and Zebra syntax and CLI is based on Cisco IOS. ...

ARM announced recently 64-bit Cortex CPU. it’s very interesting, as not only it can run real time operating systems, but 64 bit architecture enables it to address more than 4GB. it also has optional memory protection unit, which means it will be able to run software requiring it - like Linux for example. and by the way - it’s worth to mention polish real-time operating system that’s already on the market for last couple of years with significant success - Phoenix RTOS. that kind of innovation makes looking in future of IoT much more optimistic - as today, IoT is a dramatically boggy leaky dump of quickly forget rubbish. ...

after last blog on sharing full bgp feed for IPv4, I got a number of interesting questions. given many of you were asking to have also IPv6 available, I decided to extend the project to cover that as well. disclaimer you’re doing this ON YOUR OWN. i’m not responsible for anything on your end and service itself. so if it crashes your router, makes all traffic to follow different paths, or essentially anything that you can’t control - you’re completely on your own. ...

thanks to inspiration from Robert Woźny, i’ve just launched two separate AS112 sites in Poland. that would never be possible without great folks at ATMAN: Sebastian Olejnik and Damian Nowacki …and at EPIX: Krzysztof Czuszek and Paweł Staszewski what is AS112 all about? as112 AS112 is world-wide project that sinkholes requests coming in from misbehaving or misconfigured DNS clients (which may be your home PC but also some enterprise-y workstation). they send queries looking for answers to questions like “what’s the name of 192.168.0.1?” and because that’s not contained as it should be on the local or company level, it goes all up to the root servers. the question itself may be valid, but as you can see, IP address comes from RFC 1918 space, and therefore - shouldn’t be even appearing in public internet space. either we close those queries at the local level, or they really don’t make much sense once you cross private<>public border. actually, malicious actor could be abusing such queries, responding them in a way that will open your network to attack. ...

starting from tomorrow, we’re launching another edition of PLNOG conference. as usually, I’d like to invite you to join us. I’ll be delivering session about Segment Routing with Piotr Jabłoński during second day of the conference, at 4:15pm. as Segment Routing was already covered couple of times, we’ll focus on practical deployment guide in existing networks. I’ll be also demoing some of the aspects we’ll cover live during the session. see you virtually there! ...