Introduction to Hyper-V Network Virtualization (HNV)

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Microsoft announced a solution to the limits of VLANs in the cloud using a new feature that was codeveloped for Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V and Windows Azure. This new feature was called Hyper-V Network Virtualization (HNV). This is based on a more general concept called Software Defined Networking (SDN).

via Introduction to Hyper-V Network Virtualization (HNV).

SDN and HNV abstract IP address spaces. This is done using two types of address:

  • Consumer Address (CA): This is the IP address that the tenant uses in their virtual network. This address is set in the guest OS of the virtual machine as normal; it’s the only address that the tenant is normally aware of.

  • Provider Address (PA): This is the address that is assigned to the NIC of the virtual switch network to allow virtual machines to communicate at the physical layer.

As far as I can tell from this article a CA is just a private IP and a PA is simply a MAC address, renamed.  To the cloud user however none of this should matter.  I’m struggling to understand the innovation here.   Some of the networking concepts mentioned later in the article seem to add a lot of complexity to the IP layer.

MIT Moves to Intervene in Release of Aaron Swartz’s Secret Service File

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MIT claims it’s afraid the release of Swartz’s file will identify the names of MIT people who helped the Secret Service and federal prosecutors pursue felony charges against Swartz for his bulk downloading of academic articles from MIT’s network in 2011.

MIT argues that those people might face threats and harassment if their names become public. But it’s worth noting that names of third parties are already redacted from documents produced under FOIA.

via MIT Moves to Intervene in Release of Aaron Swartz’s Secret Service File | Threat Level | Wired.com.

Mobile VoIP: No Profits, Big Problems

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But in joining the OTT VoIP crowd, mobile operators are quickly discovering that being popular doesn’t make mobile VoIP profitable — far from it. Infonetics’ estimation of the revenue per mobile VoIP subscriber is a mere US$7.13 annually.

For the OTT VoIP crowd, that reality means looking for other ways to make money — possibly through ad insertions or by providing the voice segment of a mashup that pulls in other third-party apps for which people will pay, such as presence or gaming, or by charging extra for video-conference or multi-party video.

via Light Reading – Mobile VoIP: No Profits, Big Problems.

Alcatel-Lucent Breaks Record with 31Tbps Over a Single Fibre Optic Cable

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The experiment itself, which was carried out at by the firms R&D focused Bell Labs division on the Innovation City campus in Villarceaux (Paris), is understood to have used 155 lasers. Each laser was operating at different frequencies and carrying 200Gbps of data (single-carrier data channels) over a 50GHz frequency grid.

Normally such signals suffer from distortions and noise, which limit performance, but it’s understood that Alcatel-Lucent were able to resolve this by using an enhanced version of Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) that works by splitting light up into different wavelengths so that it can carry more data (a variety of other methods were also used).

via Alcatel-Lucent Breaks Record with 31Tbps Over a Single Fibre Optic Cable – ISPreview UK.

CSRF Still Armed And Dangerous

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Designed to exploit the domain cookie trust model, CSRF attacks essentially take advantage of the trust the Web application has in its authenticated users, says Subu Ramanathan, principal consultant with Security Compass.

“In order to execute this attack, a user would have to navigate to a malicious website while logged into the victim Web application,” says Ramanathan. “The malicious website, being designed to attack users of the victim application, would make [requests] to complete sensitive transactions on the victim application on behalf of the user behind the scenes.”

via CSRF Still Armed And Dangerous — Dark Reading.

Open Source IaaS Software offering a real alternative to commercial clouds

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With commercial cloud systems, there is no investment in hardware required. This enables start-up businesses to easily test out a new business idea. Whilst commercial cloud services are popular, they charge for CPU usage by the hour, storage, and bandwidth consumed. In a large organization, where many users need to be served, it may be cheaper to purchase hardware to create a private cloud. This article showcases the finest open source projects that provide a key alternative for those who wish to avoid using a commercially provided cloud.

via Open Source IaaS Software offering a real alternative to commercial clouds – Linux Links – The Linux Portal Site.

Why are US cell carriers suddenly pushing you to upgrade faster? For the money

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So why is this happening all of a sudden? Put simply, the American mobile market is highly saturated—there are fewer and fewer new customers for these carriers. Only 1.1 million Americans got mobile phones for the first time in the first quarter of 2013—the lowest ever growth for that market. Q1 2012 saw around 1.83 million new additions, which shows a quarter-over-quarter loss of 60 percent this year. Meanwhile, there was a modest quarter-over-quarter gain in prepaid customers.

via Why are US cell carriers suddenly pushing you to upgrade faster? For the money | Ars Technica.

Amazon AWS Route 53 GEO DNS Configurations

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You can send visitors to different servers based on country of their IP address using Amazon Route 53 cloud based dns server. For example, if you have a server in Amsterdam, a server in America, and a server in Singapore, then you can easily route traffic for visitors in Europe to the Amsterdam server, people in Asia go to the Singapore server and those in the rest of the world be served by the American server.

via Amazon AWS Route 53 GEO DNS Configurations.

In this post, I will explain how to configure and test GeoDNS using AWS Route 53 service.

Microsoft is cutting the price of its Surface RT tablets, base model to cost $349

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The new Surface RT prices are detailed below.

  • Surface RT 32GB – $349.99
  • Surface RT 64GB – $449.99
  • Surface RT 32GB with Touch Cover – $449.99
  • Surface RT 64GB with Touch Cover – $549.99

via Microsoft is cutting the price of its Surface RT tablets, base model to cost $349 | The Verge.

Still too high.  I can get a decent laptop at Microcenter for $350 and if I want to go small there are plenty of under $200 tablets.  The Surface looks and feels like what they used to call a netbook.  Those didn’t do so well in the market.  I can’t imagine doing real work on one of those.  It’s hard enough with a laptop.  The size of the QWERTY keyboard is a big factor in productivity IMHO.