Converging Networkcloud, security, collaboration, mobile, innovation and leadership

For those of you who are do-it-yourselfers that always wanted to learn Linux but didn’t have the time, there’s a very nice site called Linux Home Networking. Created by Peter Harrison, author of the book Linux Quick Fix Notebook, this wiki site reads like a good intro book on how to set up Linux networking. Everything from the basics of setting up IP address information on your nics to using Linux to create your own hosting server.

There are a lot of books out there on the subject but I thought I’d pass along this site to anyone considering learning Linux. Now I’d be remiss if I also didn’t mention that much of what this wiki site covers are also things that Cobia can do for you without requiring you know Linux or spend any time "ice fishing" on the Linux command line. Best of luck!

DNS on your router? Yes. Richard Bejtlich who has a great blog over at TaoSecurity posted about it yesterday. As Richard notes, Cisco routers have been DNS-capable for the last year or so, though probably many don’t know it. There’s actually a site that describes various uses of router-DNS combination, such as having a router cache and forward DNS requests for devices within a DMZ. One of Richards concerns about combining these and other services is the potential security risk of one compromised service providing access to other services on the same device or box. The obvious solution is the one we’ve largely followed to date; apply separation of duties on different boxes.

Consolidation, functional aggregation, or convergence; regardless what you call it, this is already happening. Sure, there will always be reasons to have specialized boxes but the trends are all pointing in the opposite direction. Because of trusted relationships between devices and networks, even specialized or single function boxes still pose a very significant risk if compromised within the network.

Richard’s basic position, if I’m adequately summarizing it here, is that businesses without the sophistication or expertise will place a greater reliance on converged devices. That be the case but I believe different causes are creating this result, not lack of sophistication. In many cases, it may just the opposite. Let’s look at some of the drivers around convergence.

• Managability – Less devices, less vendors, less disparate technology simplifies management. Smaller business have less infrastructure needs. Larger enterprises want ways to both standardize equipment at remote and smaller offices, and drive down the management costs (including people) needed to service, monitor and maintain infrastructure across the organization. Convergence helps achieve that goal.
• Economics – While networks, computer equipment and security are all vital to maintaining a functioning business, the cost to operate and manage the infrastructure is an overhead cost. Convergence helps reduce costs by simplifying network complexity, and taking advantage of the lower cost equipment in the UTM, UNP, multi-function devices, and increasingly, general purpose computing Intel/AMD technology (both in appliances and with off-the-shelf hardware.)
• Resources – Hardware is a delivery mechanism, not the end result. Why have five boxes if I can have two? Why have two if in this situation one meets the needs? We’ve grown up in a networking paradigm where a box does a function. What more functions – add more boxes. From a security view it makes sense; separation of duties reduces risk. But it’s the underlying software, whether burned into a chip, loaded from a flash drive, or brought in from a disk drive, that delivers the services. The hardware is the speeds, feeds, and operating platform for those services.
• Disassociation of hardware and software – We’re coming to the realization that for most applications, the binding of services performed by software to a specific hardware platform makes just as little sense in the network as it does in the data center. Sure, switches need lots of switch ports because of the port density requirements to fulfill their role in aggregating network traffic. But does a router, firewall, DNS or other network services really have to be bound to a single piece of hardware? In most cases, not really. Matter of fact, it is a significant limiting factor because increasingly it is unnecessary to bind them together. To support the networks of the future, these bonds must be broken and even Cisco recognizes this, though it is yet unclear if they will truly make this transition "to software" successfully.

I’m not saying that Richard is wrong, necessarily, just that there are other factors at play here. Some I’ve listed above. As the network gets pushed further and further out, as the perimeter dissolves into many micro-perimeters, and as the network reaches out and interconnects more of the world we live in, economics and scale changes the game on us. Make it easier. Drive down the life cycle cost. And deliver more. Make it viable for new communities to deliver and manage these services. Those are the laws of progress that will help make convergence inevitable.

I’m having conversations with universities about structuring organized student projects using Cobia. We are also putting some ideas together for other Cobia programs at universities teaching networking and security.

If you are interested in having a program like this at your school, then please contact me at mitchell@stillsecure.com. I’m talking to international and U.S. education programs.

Here’s a little more background. Cobia is an excellent development environment for universities that helps students develop software in a robust, structured, distributed, next generation software architecture. The Cobia Framework is a suite of services which Cobia modules use to interoperate as part of the Cobia platform. Services such as data persistence, configuration management, dependency registration, meta data representation and UI web services provide developers with a software infrastructure to rapidly develop new Cobia modules. Students also have the Cobia community to work with and get support from via our online forums. What a great start for a student to get engaged in a community like Cobia.

In the classroom Cobia is an excellent teaching tool, not just for development, but also for networking and security classes, and labs. Entire complex networks can be configured as virtual network nodes using VMware software freely available from VMware’s site. And of course Cobia is free to use for as many installations as you want to use it in the classroom, lab or on students’ computers.

Anyone interested, just give me a shout! Thanks.