Increase Linux Internet speed with TCP BBR congestion control

I recently read that TCP BBR has significantly increased throughput and reduced latency for connections on Google’s internal backbone networks and google.com and YouTube Web servers throughput by 4 percent on average globally – and by more than 14 percent in some countries. The TCP BBR patch needs to be applied to the Linux kernel.

Source: Increase Linux Internet speed with TCP BBR congestion control – nixCraft

Researcher uses 379-year-old algorithm to crack crypto keys found in the wild

Fermat’s algorithm was based on the fact that any odd number can be expressed as the difference between two squares. When the factors are near the root of the number, they can be calculated easily and quickly. The method isn’t feasible when factors are truly random and hence far apart.

Source: Researcher uses 379-year-old algorithm to crack crypto keys found in the wild | Ars Technica

How DARPA Trucked Its Massive Radio Frequency Testbed Across The United States

Colosseum may look like a data center, but in reality, it’s a massive radio-frequency emulation testbed that DARPA built for its Spectrum Collaboration Challenge (SC2). SC2 has been a three-year competition to demonstrate the validity of using artificial intelligences to work together in order to use wireless spectrum more efficiently than operating on pre-allocated bands would be.

Source: The Forklift Ballet: How DARPA Trucked Its Massive Radio Frequency Testbed Across The United States IEEE Spectrum – IEEE Spectrum

Why big ISPs aren’t happy about Google’s plans for encrypted DNS

Widespread adoption of DoH would limit ISPs’ ability to both monitor and modify customer queries. It wouldn’t necessarily eliminate this ability, since ISPs could still use these techniques for customers who use the ISP’s own DNS servers. But if customers switched to third-party DNS servers—either from Google or one of its various competitors—then ISPs would no longer have an easy way to tell which sites customers were accessing.

Source: Why big ISPs aren’t happy about Google’s plans for encrypted DNS | Ars Technica

How malformed packets caused CenturyLink’s 37-hour, nationwide outage

The switching module sent these malformed packets “as network management instructions to a line module,” and the packets “were delivered to all connected nodes,” the FCC said. Each node that received the packet then “retransmitted the packet to all its connected nodes.”

Source: How malformed packets caused CenturyLink’s 37-hour, nationwide outage | Ars Technica

But the outage continued because “the malformed packets continued to replicate and transit the network, generating more packets as they echoed from node to node,” the FCC wrote. Just after midnight, at least 20 hours after the problem began, CenturyLink engineers “began instructing nodes to no longer acknowledge the malformed packets.” They also “disabled the proprietary management channel, preventing it from further transmitting the malformed packets.”

A DIY Internet Network Has Drastically Expanded Its Coverage in NYC

Initially, the mesh network was powered by a single “Supernode” antenna and hardware array located at 375 Pearl Street in Manhattan. This gigabit fiber-fed antenna connects 300 buildings, where members have mounted routers on a rooftop or near a window. These local “nodes” in turn connect to an internet exchange point—without the need for a traditional ISP.

Source: A DIY Internet Network Has Drastically Expanded Its Coverage in NYC – VICE