The buzz as of late around the security and networking communities has been about the NSA and their catalog or spy toolkit. I’ve spent time in my career thinking about and doing infosec and I did a brief stint working for the FBI in a project called NCDIR. I like to think that I can provide at least a peripherally competent commentary about it [take it with a grain of salt].

About a year ago I did a brief review of the “new Sonicwall”, specifically a smaller branch office device that was said should have had all of the features of the larger devices. I proposed that it had some significant limitations (much to the disagreement of a great deal of folks). However, I stand by my statements. If you ignore the fact that firewalls often cause more problems than they solve, that NAT is a nightmarish kludge (and not a security mechanism), and will likely be phased out for better options eventually, the SonicOS I tested was pretty limited as far as what I believe should be features.

Free/Busy Calendar: The best way to schedule time with me is via my Doodle MeetMe Page. Share this: Twitter Email Print LinkedIn Facebook Reddit Tumblr Pinterest Pocket

Free/Busy Calendar: The best way to schedule time with me is via my Doodle MeetMe Page.

[Brent Salisbury]( “brent.salisbury@gmail.com”) - Dec 6, 2013 Thanks bro, just used this. I always forget how to build binaries cause I’m dumb. Laters, -B [Derick Winkworth]( “ccie15672@gmail.com”) - Feb 6, 2014 Excellent! Works like a charm…

As part of a larger fun project I’m working on (OVS for the ALIX platform; more to come on that once I have it 100% working), I have been playing a lot with OVS. It’s a great platform, and as others have mentioned, it’s as close to an SDN reference data plane implementation as we have. I’d be surprised if many if not all commercial implementations of OpenFlow aren’t based on OVS.

[Samuel Akoi]( “Sakoivision@yahoo.com”) - Dec 5, 2013 I love Networking Lennie - Dec 0, 2013 On broad interests, what has me really excited right now is: Linux containers like Docker and for some strange reason WebRTC (well, only slightly strange, because I’m a webguy too). I’m thinking, maybe, just maybe, I can use more Linux routing on our network: http://containerops.org/2013/11/19/lxc-networking/ Not Docker specifically, or even containers, but network namespaces. Network namespaces in Linux supports: forwarding, bridging, static routing and dynamic routing (for example Quagga), iptables, looks like it even supports iptables conntrackd and even IPSEC.

My personal background in computing (specifically networking) is atypical. I have a bachelors in visual arts and only took a handful of computing classes in my relatively long tenure in college. However, I did learn one valuable lesson that has served me pretty well over the 15 or so years I have been doing networking and I’d bet money any good network engineer that has more than 10 years of experience will nod their head at this and agree.

[Ken]( “ken.mercus.lai@gmail.com”) - Dec 0, 2013 Great post! [Chris Donnelly]( “Thejourneytv@gmail.com”) - Oct 4, 2013 Great Read!, Well Said Nick!

Let me be clear, when I say “single vendor” I’m talking about being “single vendor” in what you work on, not necessarily what you install (although one basically forces the other) and what I really mean is multilingual. I’ll explain after a brief history of why I am the way I am. I’m idealistic but I’m also realistic. I generally propose solutions that I think are best even if it is non-standard or out of current comfort level along with an alternative or two.