Monthly Archives: April 2016

Episode 4 – Evolution of Broadband Internet

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 45:14 — 20.7MB)

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We returned to record our fourth episode on Sunday April 24, 2016.

Interesting News and Events

Roundtable Discussion – Evolution of Broadband Internet

  • 1972 Acoustic coupler modem
    • 1,200 bits by sending 600 symbols per second (600 baud) using phase shift keying
  • 1984 9600 modem (2400 baud) (V.32)
  • 1998 56k modem (8000/3429 baud) (V.90) digital modulation
  • 1988 Integrated Services for Digital Network (ISDN)
    • 64-kbit/s with 2 channels 128kbit/s
    • no market penetration in the US :   It Still Does Nothing
    • Primary Rate Interface (PRI), which is carried over an E1 (2048 kbit/s)
  • X.25 in the 1980s  universal and global packet-switched network
  • 1998 ADSL Asyncron digital subscriber line started at 8.0 Mbit/s1.0 Mbit/s
  • 2008 ADSL2+ITU G.992.5 Annex MADSL2+M 24.0 Mbit/s 3.3 Mbit/s
  • 2001 VDSL Very-high-bit-rate digital subscriber line 55 Mbit/s3Mbit/s
  • 2006 VDSL2 100 Mbit/s100 Mbit/s
  • 1997 DOCSIS Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification
  • 2013 DOCSIS 3.1   >> 10 Gbit/s downstream and 1 Gbit/s
  • FTTH fiber-to-the-home (Verizon FiOS, Google Fiber, etc)

What tools are you using?

Opengear console servers for building out-of-band management networks. Michael wrote about Opengear back in 2013 in a post titled, Opengear Console Servers – Never leave the office without one! One of the first things I did when I arrived at my new employer over 2+ years ago now was to deploy a number of Opengear appliances to make sure that we had out-of-band access to all the critical network infrastructure.

Cheers!

Notes: this week Mike accidentally had Audacity recording my Logitech webcam microphone and not my Blue Yeti and Dominik had his microphone volume turned up just a little too high.

Episode 3 – Simple Network Design

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 40:03 — 18.3MB)

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We returned to record our third episode on Sunday April 4, 2013.

Interesting News and Events

  • Gumtree serves world’s worst exploit kit to scores of Aussies – Malware expert Jerome Segura says Australia’s most popular classifieds site, Gumtree.com.au, was serving the world’s most capable exploit kit to some of its millions of monthly visitors.
  • SAMSAM: THE DOCTOR WILL SEE YOU, AFTER HE PAYS THE RANSOM – Cisco Talos is currently observing a widespread campaign leveraging the Samas/Samsam/MSIL.B/C ransomware variant. Unlike most ransomware, SamSam is not launched via user focused attack vectors, such as phishing campaigns and exploit kits. This particular family seems to be distributed via compromising servers and using them as a foothold to move laterally through the network to compromise additional machines which are then held for ransom. A particular focus appears to have been placed on the healthcare industry.Adversaries have been seen leveraging JexBoss, an open source tool for testing and exploiting JBoss application servers, to gain a foothold in the network. Once they have access to the network they proceed to encrypt multiple Windows systems using SamSam.
  • BIOS upgrades needed for fre…..ezing Cisco switches – Too-talkative PCIe bus can leave Nexus 5600 and Nexus 6001 just hanging around
  • Digital Attack Map – Digital Attack Map is a live data visualization of DDoS attacks around the globe, built through a collaboration between Google Ideas and Arbor Networks. The tool surfaces anonymous attack traffic data to let users explore historic trends and find reports of outages happening on a given day.
  • Norse Corp – Norse Live Attack Map – Sources: Security Firm Norse Corp. Imploding

Roundtable Discussion

  • Cables
  • Wiring closet
  • HVAC / Environmentals and Cooling
  • Data Center / MDF / IDF
  • Uninerruptible Power Supply / Generators
  • Start with templates for small, medium and large size networks
  • Try to stick to your design and don´t do every site completely different
  • WAN connectivity >> what is available?
    • >> ISP >> DSL, cable Modem , 4G backup
    • >> Dark Fibre , Metro Ethernet
    • SDWAN ?
  • Core Layer
  • redundant Core ?
  • modular or fixed form factor
  • Uplink capacity
  • L2 and L3 redundancy
  • Access Layer
  • Switch selection process:
  • single switch vs. stack
  • Uplinks,
  • VoIP and PoE
  • Port requirements
  • -How to deal with insufficient passive cables
  • WLAN
  • Site survey
  • AP deployment
  • 2.4Ghz or 5Ghz design and preferences
  • RollOut Planing
  • Project management
  • patching all the needed end user connections
  • Full patch deployment vs. patch only when required

What tools are you using?

If you need to perform a wireless packet trace across multiple 2.4Ghz or 5Ghz 802.11 channels you can leverage multiple AirPcap wireless adapters from Riverbed using WireShark to capture all the channels concurrently. The AirPcap multi channel aggregator helps mux all the 802.11 channels into a single WireShark capture saving you a lot of time and effort.

Cheers!