William Gibson is working at the height of his abilities in The Peripheral. Characters move back and forth between near present-day and an unusual post-apocalyptic future, and the book blends high-tech, visionary showpieces with themes of class, opportunity, and economic injustice.
CCIE RS – it’s the payload, not the header
There is some actual content here, but first – a few drips of sap. The title is a nerdy rendering of the adage ‘its the journey, not the destination’. The decision to take time from study and blog had to do with this very thing – reserving time for reflection along the way. While taking…
Review: Hadoop Operations
Hadoop Operations Eric Sammer Hadoop is one of those applications all data centers seem to need to support – and there is a lot of information out there about how Hadoop works, how to use it, and how to build Hadoop systems. From these, it’s pretty easy to glean a general set of requirements for…
Review: OpenStack Deployment
Deploying OpenStack Ken Pepple OpenStack is a wide ranging initiative started by Rackspace and NASA in 2010 designed to provide open source software to build and manage IaaS cloud services. What’s often missing in open source projects like OpenStack is a definitive guide to the release schedule, the different pieces, how the different pieces interact,…
Review: Cloud Architecture Patterns
Cloud Architecture Patterns Bill Wilder Networks support applications. Okay, that might seem a little obvious, but it needs to be said from time to time. 🙂 In that vein, I often find it useful to get a better grip on the applications people are putting on networks, and how they expect the network to behave….
Review: Information Storage and Management
EMC Education Services Safari | Amazon I’m a routing geek. Not a storage, compute, SONET, web design, and mobile phone geek — a routing geek. But even routing geeks need to know something about the stuff that attaches to the network right? In the spirit of learning something new, I recently picked up (and…
Book Review: Software Defined Networks
Software Defined Networks Thomas D. Nadeau and Ken Gray If you’ve been trying to find a good, solid, introduction to network programmability, you need look no farther than Software Defined Networks. While the authors do include a good bit of information that’s outside the field of network programmability, overall this is about the best overview…
Operation (Unicorn?) Mincemeat, Counter Security, and a book about JWAS
In 1943, Spanish officials recovered the body of a spy from the Atlantic coast of Huelva. The suitcase still attached to his arm contained Allied war plans, identifying Greece and Sardinia as the beachhead for the forthcoming assault on Italy. Amazed by their luck, Axis forces redeployed divisions from Sicily, Northern France, and the Eastern…
Ambassadors Cookbook for Enterprise now available
At the beginning of 2013 I was asked to join the Juniper Ambassador team; essentially an outreach program to those active in social channels including the J-Net community. Whilst I was appreciative of the vendor swag; it wasn’t until the community manager had the bright idea for us to collaborate on a book did it…
Book Review: A Primer of Multicast Routing
I was recently in need of a refresher on multicast routing, so I picked up Eric Rosenberg’s A Primer of Multicast Routing (Springer Briefs in Computer Science). The overall plan of the book is excellent, starting with a basic overview of what multicast is (and does), including why multicast is more efficient than unicast for…
Review of the Wireshark Certified Network Analyst Certification
The Wireshark Certification Program strives to test a candidate’s knowledge and ability to troubleshoot, optimize and secure a network based on evidence found by analyzing traffic captured with the world’s most popular and widely-deployed analyzer, Wireshark. Having completed the WCNA certification exam recently, I thought it would be worth writing about for others that might consider studying for…
Book Review: Practical Packet Analysis, 2nd Edition
Book Details Practical Packet Analysis Chris Sanders No Starch Press; Second Edition (July 6, 2011) ISBN-13: 978-1593272661 Publisher Website Author Chris Sanders is a computer security consultant, author, and researcher. A SANS Mentor who holds several industry certifications, including CISSP, GCIA, GCIH, and GREM, he writes regularly for WindowSecurity.com and his blog, ChrisSanders.org. Sanders uses Wireshark daily for packet analysis. He…
Book Review: Metasploit, The Penetration Tester’s Guide
Title: Metasploit, The Penetration Tester’s Guide. Copyright © 2011 by David Kennedy, Jim O’Gorman, Devon Kearns, & Mati Aharoni. Foreword by HD Moore. No Starch Press, Inc. (299 pages). About the Authors David Kennedy is Chief Information Security Officer at Diebold Inc. He is also an open-source tools developer and a Back|Track and Exploit Database…
