"Cisco picks up first Double-A win"
Pitcher Mike Cisco (Wando High School/South Carolina) picked up his first victory since being promoted to the Double-A Eastern League.
Cisco, playing for the Reading Phillies, worked 5 1/3 innings and and allowed seven hits and four earned runs in a 6-4 win over Erie on Wednesday.
Cisco had started out 0-3 for Reading after being promoted from Class A Clearwater. For the entire season, he's 8-6 with a 4.14 earned run average.
Cisco was drafted in the 36th round by the Phillies in 2008.
Around the bases
--Catcher Alex Garabedian (College of Charleston) has been on a home-run tear of late. The 6-2, 210-pounder hit three homers in four games last week, bringing his total to six for the season with Class A Inland Empire in the California League. He's hit .303 over his last 10 games with four RBIs.
--First baseman Justin Smoak (Stratford HS/USC), hampered by a strained oblique of late, is batting .240 with four homers and 23 RBIs in 53 games for Class AAA Oklahoma City. But that didn't stop Smoak from being selected to play for Team USA in the 2009 World Cup next month.
--Shortstop Reese Havens (Bishop England HS/USC) continued his strong play in the second half for Class A St. Lucie. Havens is batting .333 in his last 10 games, with two homers, four doubles and eight RBIs. His average is up to .244 with 12 homers and 49 RBIs in 89 games.
--Pitcher Jon Ellis (St. Andrews HS/The Citadel) picked up his first save for Triple-A Portland in the Pacific Coast League last Monday. The bullpen workhorse pitched a scoreless inning in a win over Sacramento, and is 7-3 with a 4.30 ERA for Portland.
--Pitcher Matt Crim (Stratford HS/The Citadel) took his first loss as a pro on Wednesday for the Class A Danville Braves. Crim allowed three hits and four earned runs in five innings against Burlington, taking a 4-3 loss. Crim is now a mere 10-1 with a 2.96 ERA.
--Outfielder Justin Greene (Stratford HS/Francis Marion) is 5 for 14 in his last three games for Class Winston-Salem … Catcher John Murrian (Stratford HS/Winthrop) is hitting .298 with Oneonta in the New York-Penn League, despite a recent 0 for 14 skid.
SOURCE:
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Friday, August 28, 2009
Submarine Fiber optic cable repair
Ever wondered how the world is connected? Through submarine cables specifically fiber optics and if these fiber optics break the internet world will be in chaos everything will be in a drag because of the cables have been break here is the video on how it is being repaired:
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Virtual network switches add scalability to server virtualization
With virtual switches, Cisco Systems and now Arista Networks are trying to clear the networking bottlenecks that occur when enterprises do large-scale server virtualization.
Cisco's Nexus 1000v aims to give the networking team control over virtual infrastructure management. Meanwhile, Arista's vEOS product, announced today, integrates with VMware's existing technology and promises to be more appealing to system administrators who want to bypass network administrators when managing virtual environments.
One of the key networking challenges with server virtualization is the management of virtualized network and security profiles, as well as virtual machine configurations, as they migrate across physical hosts. Performing that task in a scalable way is tough and often prevents enterprises from taking their server virtualization efforts beyond server consolidation and into dynamic resource allocation. This is very much a networking problem, and companies like Cisco Systems and now Arista Networks are trying to solve it.
Technologies like VMware's vMotion and vSphere make it easy for virtual machines to migrate from one physical host to another as needed and for applications to scale up and down by combining the resources of multiple physical hosts. However, a networking bottleneck occurs when enterprises try to create such a dynamic virtual infrastructure. Network and system administrators struggle to make sure that the virtual network and security settings and profiles migrate with the virtual machines as they traverse across physical hosts. VMware and other hypervisor vendors offer some form of virtual switching technology that allows server administrators to manage the virtual network and security settings within the physical hosts, but typically these virtual switching products don't scale up to the level that some enterprises need.
More on networking for server virtualization
Talking cloud computing networks and 10 Gigabit Ethernet with Arista
Managing virtual network relationships
Server virtualization and the impact on network configuration
"If vMotion moves a workload from one machine to another to balance out load or to recover from failure, that's great," said Joe Skorupa, research vice president with Gartner. "But if you have to manually go back and reconfigure the switches, that's not so good."
These networking bottlenecks often limit the extent of server virtualization that can occur within an enterprise.
"Having spoken with customers about this problem going on three years now, this has been one of the key points with trying to get past the 15% to 20% [ceiling] of your servers being virtualized," said Rob Whiteley, vice president and research director at Forrester Research. "At a small scale, you don't bump into networking problems. But typically, around 15% to 20% of your production servers going virtual, you're going to start having issues."
This problem of scale motivated Cisco to release the Nexus 1000v earlier this year. This virtual switch actually replaces VMware's vSwitch technology and manages the virtual network and security connections that take place within virtualized servers. It also gives network administrators a familiar interface for managing those connections, which are quite often handled by server administrators without the network administrators' knowledge.
Now, startup switch vendor Arista Networks has introduced its new virtual Extensible Operating System (vEOS). In some ways similar to the Nexus 1000v concept, Arista's vEOS is actually a software image of the EOS operating system that runs on all of Arista's physical switches. It functions as a virtual appliance, running inside the physical server that is hosting virtual servers. It doesn't replace VMware's vSwitch technology. Instead, the vEOS works with it, making vSwitch more scalable and familiar to network administrators, who find many of VMware's products too foreign.
"Clearly, the virtual switch that comes with VMware infrastructure is good, but it won't scale to the data center networking that people need," Whiteley said. "I think what Arista has done is very elegant from a software engineering perspective. They're not beating their chests on their ASICs and their hardware. They're appropriately spending a little more time on the concept of a truly stateful operating system."
Systems vs. networking: Battling for virtual network management control
The difference in approach between Arista and Cisco is also indicative of a quiet struggle that has been going between system administrators and network administrators for control of switching and management in virtualized data centers.
"Cisco wants to extend [its] control all the way up into servers and take control of them," Skorupa said. "Arista is certainly aligning [itself] with VMware."
Arista's vEOS may be based on the operating system that runs on its physical switches, but Skorupa believes the vEOS will go largely unused by network administrators. Instead, system administrators will have more of a use for it, he said. Systems guys have been managing switching within virtual hosts for a few years now, much to the chagrin of network administrators. The vEOS will allow them to continue on that path.
"It's the battle we've seen brewing and going on quietly in the background for the past year or so, which is: Who is in control?" Skorupa said. "Is the network guy in control when he puts the Cisco virtual switch into the VMware server? Or is the server guy in control when he uses the VMware embedded switch and then integrates with whichever networking vendor [such as Arista] he chooses?
Server administrators usually support virtual switching products that enable them to manage the process without relying on the networking team, Skorupa said.
"It creates political problems for the network guys," he said, "because they lose their influence and control."
Doug Gourlay, Arista's vice president of marketing, emphasized that the vEOS is aimed squarely at network administrators.
"The server guy can access vSphere with his familiar Web interface," Gourlay said. "The network administrator gains CLI and SMNP."
A new breed of administrator for the virtualized environment?
The so-called war between server and network factions in virtualized data centers may ultimately give way to a new hybrid data center role, a concept Whiteley describes as the virtualization administrator. These admins will be mostly server-oriented but will have strong storage and networking skills as well.
"The $5,000 price point [of Arista's vEOS] is the perfect price point to attack these virtualization administrators because they're going to be able to quickly solve the problems they have, which is scaling the network," Whiteley said. "At the same time, I don't think it completely alienates the networking team because it puts a decent working product in there that they will be able to use. Now, there will still be politics at play here because if the server team keeps procuring its own network infrastructure, even in a virtual form fact , let's hope they're looping in the network team. I don't think that's Arista's problem to solve. That's an internal challenge that companies have to work through."
Arista's vEOS comes free of charge with the purchase of an Arista 7000 switch. A scaled-back version of vEOS that addresses only visibility and troubleshooting is available free to anyone for a limited time. The full network configuration version is priced at $5,000.
SOURCE:
Cisco's Nexus 1000v aims to give the networking team control over virtual infrastructure management. Meanwhile, Arista's vEOS product, announced today, integrates with VMware's existing technology and promises to be more appealing to system administrators who want to bypass network administrators when managing virtual environments.
One of the key networking challenges with server virtualization is the management of virtualized network and security profiles, as well as virtual machine configurations, as they migrate across physical hosts. Performing that task in a scalable way is tough and often prevents enterprises from taking their server virtualization efforts beyond server consolidation and into dynamic resource allocation. This is very much a networking problem, and companies like Cisco Systems and now Arista Networks are trying to solve it.
Technologies like VMware's vMotion and vSphere make it easy for virtual machines to migrate from one physical host to another as needed and for applications to scale up and down by combining the resources of multiple physical hosts. However, a networking bottleneck occurs when enterprises try to create such a dynamic virtual infrastructure. Network and system administrators struggle to make sure that the virtual network and security settings and profiles migrate with the virtual machines as they traverse across physical hosts. VMware and other hypervisor vendors offer some form of virtual switching technology that allows server administrators to manage the virtual network and security settings within the physical hosts, but typically these virtual switching products don't scale up to the level that some enterprises need.
More on networking for server virtualization
Talking cloud computing networks and 10 Gigabit Ethernet with Arista
Managing virtual network relationships
Server virtualization and the impact on network configuration
"If vMotion moves a workload from one machine to another to balance out load or to recover from failure, that's great," said Joe Skorupa, research vice president with Gartner. "But if you have to manually go back and reconfigure the switches, that's not so good."
These networking bottlenecks often limit the extent of server virtualization that can occur within an enterprise.
"Having spoken with customers about this problem going on three years now, this has been one of the key points with trying to get past the 15% to 20% [ceiling] of your servers being virtualized," said Rob Whiteley, vice president and research director at Forrester Research. "At a small scale, you don't bump into networking problems. But typically, around 15% to 20% of your production servers going virtual, you're going to start having issues."
This problem of scale motivated Cisco to release the Nexus 1000v earlier this year. This virtual switch actually replaces VMware's vSwitch technology and manages the virtual network and security connections that take place within virtualized servers. It also gives network administrators a familiar interface for managing those connections, which are quite often handled by server administrators without the network administrators' knowledge.
Now, startup switch vendor Arista Networks has introduced its new virtual Extensible Operating System (vEOS). In some ways similar to the Nexus 1000v concept, Arista's vEOS is actually a software image of the EOS operating system that runs on all of Arista's physical switches. It functions as a virtual appliance, running inside the physical server that is hosting virtual servers. It doesn't replace VMware's vSwitch technology. Instead, the vEOS works with it, making vSwitch more scalable and familiar to network administrators, who find many of VMware's products too foreign.
"Clearly, the virtual switch that comes with VMware infrastructure is good, but it won't scale to the data center networking that people need," Whiteley said. "I think what Arista has done is very elegant from a software engineering perspective. They're not beating their chests on their ASICs and their hardware. They're appropriately spending a little more time on the concept of a truly stateful operating system."
Systems vs. networking: Battling for virtual network management control
The difference in approach between Arista and Cisco is also indicative of a quiet struggle that has been going between system administrators and network administrators for control of switching and management in virtualized data centers.
"Cisco wants to extend [its] control all the way up into servers and take control of them," Skorupa said. "Arista is certainly aligning [itself] with VMware."
Arista's vEOS may be based on the operating system that runs on its physical switches, but Skorupa believes the vEOS will go largely unused by network administrators. Instead, system administrators will have more of a use for it, he said. Systems guys have been managing switching within virtual hosts for a few years now, much to the chagrin of network administrators. The vEOS will allow them to continue on that path.
"It's the battle we've seen brewing and going on quietly in the background for the past year or so, which is: Who is in control?" Skorupa said. "Is the network guy in control when he puts the Cisco virtual switch into the VMware server? Or is the server guy in control when he uses the VMware embedded switch and then integrates with whichever networking vendor [such as Arista] he chooses?
Server administrators usually support virtual switching products that enable them to manage the process without relying on the networking team, Skorupa said.
"It creates political problems for the network guys," he said, "because they lose their influence and control."
Doug Gourlay, Arista's vice president of marketing, emphasized that the vEOS is aimed squarely at network administrators.
"The server guy can access vSphere with his familiar Web interface," Gourlay said. "The network administrator gains CLI and SMNP."
A new breed of administrator for the virtualized environment?
The so-called war between server and network factions in virtualized data centers may ultimately give way to a new hybrid data center role, a concept Whiteley describes as the virtualization administrator. These admins will be mostly server-oriented but will have strong storage and networking skills as well.
"The $5,000 price point [of Arista's vEOS] is the perfect price point to attack these virtualization administrators because they're going to be able to quickly solve the problems they have, which is scaling the network," Whiteley said. "At the same time, I don't think it completely alienates the networking team because it puts a decent working product in there that they will be able to use. Now, there will still be politics at play here because if the server team keeps procuring its own network infrastructure, even in a virtual form fact , let's hope they're looping in the network team. I don't think that's Arista's problem to solve. That's an internal challenge that companies have to work through."
Arista's vEOS comes free of charge with the purchase of an Arista 7000 switch. A scaled-back version of vEOS that addresses only visibility and troubleshooting is available free to anyone for a limited time. The full network configuration version is priced at $5,000.
SOURCE:
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Deadly pings for Cisco routers and switches
A bug in the Firewall Services Module (FWSM) software allows Cisco routers and switches to be disabled by a series of crafted ICMP packets. Catalyst 6500 series switches and Cisco 7600 series routers equipped with a Firewall Services Module are affected. All FWSM software versions 2.x, 3.x and 4.x without the specific fix for this bug are vulnerable. In a security advisory, Cisco states that processing ICMP packets can lead a processor to use all available execution threads, with the result that the system will not forward any further packets. The FSWM itself is then no longer available remotely and, if configured for failover operation, the failover may also fail.
The command show np 2 stats can be used to determine whether the problem has previously occurred. If it has the error message "ERROR: np_logger_query request for FP Stats failed" is returned. The vendor does not suggest a workaround, but has made updated versions of the FWSM software available in which the problem does not occur.
SOURCE:
The command show np 2 stats can be used to determine whether the problem has previously occurred. If it has the error message "ERROR: np_logger_query request for FP Stats failed" is returned. The vendor does not suggest a workaround, but has made updated versions of the FWSM software available in which the problem does not occur.
SOURCE:
Monday, August 24, 2009
Cisco Patches DDOS Vulnerability in Its BGP Protocol
Cisco, the leader in networking tools around the globe, has recently released a patch for its routers and switches fixing a critical vulnerability in its IOS BGP protocol. This vulnerability allowed hackers to fool an equipment to think it was under attack and remotely shut it down.
BGP (Border Gateway Protocol) is a dynamic routing protocol that heavily relies on network updates to know the equipment’s position and status inside a network. The fixed vulnerability occurred when invalid BGP updates were received by Cisco IOS XR software. Supplying an invalid attribute in the prefix of a BGP update packet, Cisco routers would have stopped connections for that route until new clean updates were received. This would have enabled hackers to practically send bad updates over a series of routes and disable an entire network.
The IOS was also vulnerable when lengthy BGP updates had been received by Cisco software. In this kind of situations, routers would have crashed or reset. A third vulnerability inside the BGP protocol regarded BGP updates that contained a large number of AS prepends. This led to BGP service crashes.
All these vulnerabilities were fixed with the release of a recent patch that can be found here.
On the other hand, a completely different bug was reported regarding another Cisco product, this time inside its Firewall Service Module (FWSM). The vulnerability would have allowed attackers to send modified pings to disable a Cisco switch or router. The equipment, by processing these specially crafted ICMP packets, would have used all available computing threads and stopped relaying packets between its ports. This led to a complete network stoppage.
Catalyst 6500 series switches and Cisco 7600 series routers are vulnerable to this problem when having installed FWSM 2.X, 3.X and 4.X as a service. Security experts at Cisco did not report any case where this vulnerability was used in the wild, but after further tests, they noticed that some network data streams could unintentionally trigger the bug.
SOURCE:
BGP (Border Gateway Protocol) is a dynamic routing protocol that heavily relies on network updates to know the equipment’s position and status inside a network. The fixed vulnerability occurred when invalid BGP updates were received by Cisco IOS XR software. Supplying an invalid attribute in the prefix of a BGP update packet, Cisco routers would have stopped connections for that route until new clean updates were received. This would have enabled hackers to practically send bad updates over a series of routes and disable an entire network.
The IOS was also vulnerable when lengthy BGP updates had been received by Cisco software. In this kind of situations, routers would have crashed or reset. A third vulnerability inside the BGP protocol regarded BGP updates that contained a large number of AS prepends. This led to BGP service crashes.
All these vulnerabilities were fixed with the release of a recent patch that can be found here.
On the other hand, a completely different bug was reported regarding another Cisco product, this time inside its Firewall Service Module (FWSM). The vulnerability would have allowed attackers to send modified pings to disable a Cisco switch or router. The equipment, by processing these specially crafted ICMP packets, would have used all available computing threads and stopped relaying packets between its ports. This led to a complete network stoppage.
Catalyst 6500 series switches and Cisco 7600 series routers are vulnerable to this problem when having installed FWSM 2.X, 3.X and 4.X as a service. Security experts at Cisco did not report any case where this vulnerability was used in the wild, but after further tests, they noticed that some network data streams could unintentionally trigger the bug.
SOURCE:
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Cisco patches up to prevent denial of service attacks
A flaw in the Firewall Services Module could be used for denial of service attacks.
Cisco has released an update that addresses a vulnerability in a series of switches and routers.
The flaw is in the Firewall Services Module (FWSM) for its Catalyst 6500 series switches and 7600 series routers.
An attacker could have caused a denial of service (DoS) attack if they sent "specially crafted ICMP" messages to the Firewall Services Module, Cisco said.
Cisco said it had not yet seen any cases of the flaw being exploited, but had observed data streams that had triggered it by accident.
The US-CERT (United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team) encouraged users and administrators to review the advisory and apply the necessary updates and workarounds.
This new flaw follows a separate patch the networking company released on Wednesday for its IOS XR software, used on some of its routers.
This could have led to routing inconsistencies and denial-of-service.
SOURCE:
Cisco has released an update that addresses a vulnerability in a series of switches and routers.
The flaw is in the Firewall Services Module (FWSM) for its Catalyst 6500 series switches and 7600 series routers.
An attacker could have caused a denial of service (DoS) attack if they sent "specially crafted ICMP" messages to the Firewall Services Module, Cisco said.
Cisco said it had not yet seen any cases of the flaw being exploited, but had observed data streams that had triggered it by accident.
The US-CERT (United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team) encouraged users and administrators to review the advisory and apply the necessary updates and workarounds.
This new flaw follows a separate patch the networking company released on Wednesday for its IOS XR software, used on some of its routers.
This could have led to routing inconsistencies and denial-of-service.
SOURCE:
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Cisco News - Cisco Networking Academy Announces New Security Course
The Cisco Networking Academy has reportedly introduced a new Cisco (News - Alert) CCNA Security course in partnership with the education community. This course will cater to the growing demand for entry-level professionals with networking security and risk-management skills, Cisco said.
For a budding network professional security and risk management skills are the most important tools to have in the job market. The CCNA Security course helps these professionals in safeguarding networks and databases. Ensuring the materials are relevant and meet the exceptional quality standards of Cisco Networking Academy, the CCNA Security curriculum has been field-tested by educators around the world, Cisco said.
For professionals who want to enhance their CCNA-level skill set and help meet the growing demand for networking professionals with specialized skills, the Cisco Networking Academy CCNA Security course provides a next step. The curriculum focuses on maintaining the integrity, confidentiality and availability of data and devices by providing core security concepts and skills needed for the installation, troubleshooting, and monitoring of network devices.
"Cisco Networking Academy provides lifelong learning and career ladders for students to find and develop rewarding career opportunities, improving the future for themselves and their communities,” Amy Christen, vice president, corporate affairs and general manager, Cisco Networking Academy, said in a statement. “This new CCNA Security curriculum reflects the evolving technologies and specialized security skills that will help students succeed in today's global, networked economy.”
Cisco has now improved Cisco Packet Tracer to support the security protocols covered in the CCNA Security curriculum. Professionals can now acquire the skills required to develop a security infrastructure with the CCNA Security certification.
Recently, Cisco partnered with AIESEC, a student-run organization, to provide Malaysian students the opportunity to expand their skills and gain valuable international work experience. The program is opened to qualified students that are currently enrolled in the Cisco Networking Academy program. Officials said that the professional internship program will transform selected students' classroom knowledge to practical work-based skills that will last from six months to 18 months.
SOURCE:
For a budding network professional security and risk management skills are the most important tools to have in the job market. The CCNA Security course helps these professionals in safeguarding networks and databases. Ensuring the materials are relevant and meet the exceptional quality standards of Cisco Networking Academy, the CCNA Security curriculum has been field-tested by educators around the world, Cisco said.
For professionals who want to enhance their CCNA-level skill set and help meet the growing demand for networking professionals with specialized skills, the Cisco Networking Academy CCNA Security course provides a next step. The curriculum focuses on maintaining the integrity, confidentiality and availability of data and devices by providing core security concepts and skills needed for the installation, troubleshooting, and monitoring of network devices.
"Cisco Networking Academy provides lifelong learning and career ladders for students to find and develop rewarding career opportunities, improving the future for themselves and their communities,” Amy Christen, vice president, corporate affairs and general manager, Cisco Networking Academy, said in a statement. “This new CCNA Security curriculum reflects the evolving technologies and specialized security skills that will help students succeed in today's global, networked economy.”
Cisco has now improved Cisco Packet Tracer to support the security protocols covered in the CCNA Security curriculum. Professionals can now acquire the skills required to develop a security infrastructure with the CCNA Security certification.
Recently, Cisco partnered with AIESEC, a student-run organization, to provide Malaysian students the opportunity to expand their skills and gain valuable international work experience. The program is opened to qualified students that are currently enrolled in the Cisco Networking Academy program. Officials said that the professional internship program will transform selected students' classroom knowledge to practical work-based skills that will last from six months to 18 months.
SOURCE:
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