VPLS.US

I started running Fligtaware from my home the other day 8/1/20

With a (5 / 7) DBi Antenna

Flightaware Opens in a new Window

and then again on 8/15/20 with another antenna (9 / 10 / 12 DBi)

Flightaware 2
Opens in a new window

The 5/7 is on the roof. The 9/10/12 DBi is in my office.

Going to be putting the larger antenna up on the roof in the near future.

So one of my favorite Cartoonists Ralph Bakshi wrote a movie called Wizards in thee 70’s.

I’m a new catholic. Or not actually a Catholic yet. I’m just going through their indoctrination phase right now. Anyway, Every time I see the Bible March or Communion. I see the Scene from Wizards where the two priests are caught “sleeping” in the temple and they have to do their “thing”.

It’s a hilarious movie and was kind of a cult movie while I was in college.

I have several of his signed Cells from that movies. Probably 5 or 6. I’m working on getting them framed and up on the walls. Maybe someday I’ll get them displayed ;)

Added a RAID 5 array to my storage units and needed to be able to gather
more information than just the cat /proc/mdstat. So I use a combination of

mdadm
smartctl

I wrote a little shelll script. It’s not very efficient, but I dont’ have time right now to make it more efficient, and it does the job. Yeah, it’s making lots of calls but Oh well, it’s not a busy drive right now and the system is basically empty 1 TB used on a 16 TB System, with nobody really using it. So it’s empty.

#!/bin/bash
##########################################################
#    Use Smartctl to get RAID Infor / Stat / Temp / Hours
##########################################################
GREP=/usr/bin/grep
ECHO=/usr/bin/echo
SCTL="/usr/sbin/smartctl --all"
FIND1="ature_Cels"
FIND2="Power_On"
DATE=`/usr/bin/date +"%m.%d.%y.%H.%M"`
AWK=/usr/bin/awk
CAT=/usr/bin/cat
MDADM="/sbin/mdadm --detail /dev/md127"
DRIVES=(/dev/sda /dev/sdb /dev/sdc /dev/sdd /dev/sde /dev/sdf)
#
# RAID STATS
#
$ECHO "=================================="
$CAT /proc/mdstat
$ECHO "=================================="
$ECHO "Drive STATUS:"
$MDADM | $GREP clean
$MDADM | $GREP Failed
$ECHO "=================================="
$ECHO "Active DRIVE(s):"
$MDADM | $GREP active
$ECHO "=================================="
#
#  TEMP Stats
#
$ECHO "DRIVE Temperature(s):"
for i in "${DRIVES[@]}"
 do
   TEMP=`$SCTL $i | $GREP $FIND1 | $AWK -F- '{print $2}' | $AWK '{print $1}'`
   if [ ! -z "$TEMP" ]
   then
    echo $DATE:$i:$TEMP
   fi
 done
#
# HOURS Stats
#
$ECHO "=================================="
#
$ECHO "Power ON HOUR(s):"
for i in "${DRIVES[@]}"
 do
   TEMP=`$SCTL $i | $GREP $FIND2 | $AWK -F- '{print $2}' | $AWK '{print $1}'`
   if [ ! -z "$TEMP" ]
   then
    echo $DATE:$i:$TEMP
   fi
 done

Which gives me a nice result…

root@nas4:~/bin# ./raidstat
==================================
Personalities : [raid6] [raid5] [raid4]
md127 : active raid5 sdc1[2] sdb1[1] sde1[5] sdd1[3] sda1[0]
      15627540480 blocks super 1.2 level 5, 512k chunk, algorithm 2 [5/5] [UUUUU]
      bitmap: 0/30 pages [0KB], 65536KB chunk

unused devices: <none>
==================================
             State : clean
    Failed Devices : 0
==================================
Active DRIVE
       0       8        1        0      active sync   /dev/sda1
       1       8       17        1      active sync   /dev/sdb1
       2       8       33        2      active sync   /dev/sdc1
       3       8       49        3      active sync   /dev/sdd1
       5       8       65        4      active sync   /dev/sde1
==================================
DRIVE Temperatures:
08.24.20.08.27:/dev/sda:38
08.24.20.08.27:/dev/sdb:37
08.24.20.08.27:/dev/sdc:34
08.24.20.08.27:/dev/sdd:37
08.24.20.08.27:/dev/sde:36
==================================
Power ON HOURS:
08.24.20.08.27:/dev/sda:576
08.24.20.08.27:/dev/sdb:517
08.24.20.08.27:/dev/sdc:517
08.24.20.08.27:/dev/sdd:516
08.24.20.08.27:/dev/sde:517

So Now I have a nice little script I’m going to setup a cron job to run and then every morning It’ll e-mail me a copy of the results for me to check out and make sure there isn’t any problems with the NAS drive. I’m not actively on these NAS devices so I want to make sure that nothing happens to the RAID Array while I’m watching TV or something else. I just want to set it up and forget about it. Stick more stuff on it and have it do it’s thing in the background.
====================
So now I have 4 RAID systems in the Da Attic
N1 RAID 1 16TB Active 16TB Mirroring
N2 RAID 1 8TB Active 8 TB Mirroring
N3 RAID 1 16TB Active 16TB Mirroring
N4 RAID 5 16TB Active
====================

Grand total of 56TB Protected raid. I’m thinking about moving some of the RAID 1 to RAID 5. I just haven’t decided if I trust RAID 5 yet. I’ve been running it for a few weeks. I just don’t have any way to backup the system. So If I loose it I loose it. Right now I’m not really needing it, so I have it running and I’m playing with it to see if I loose anything on it. I’m thinking the first time I loose it I’ll probably nix the idea of using RAID 5. I’ve had that problem in the past. But that was 13 years ago. RAID has come a long way since then. I guess I’ll wait and see.

I was just asked the most interesting question.

is this question valid?
A computer with a host IP address of 10.10.5.1 sends a data packet with a destination, IP address of 10.10.5.2. A subnet mask of 255.255.255.0 is being used. Determine whether the packet stays in the LAN or is sent to the gateway.

Of course any question is valid. But is it a good question, is probably a better question.

So that question “WAS” pretty simple in 1999. It stays on the “LAN” however that LAN could have been separated by as many as three layer 2 hops. So from a Layer 3 perspective they would be local to each other. Any traffic destined as described above wouldn’t have to go up to an intelligent device to “route” the traffic but it could be “switched” to it’s end destination. The traffic would not cross IP Broadcast domains, but could cross multiple collision domains, depending of if it was crossing a hub or a switch. But, I guess there probably aren’t any hubs around today.


So in the old days, it probably behaved like the question asker was asking.


today? Well maybe not so much. If that same set of devices were placed into a Virtual Private LAN Service that were spread between Los Angeles and London, and the one computer .1 arp’d to get the MAC address of the other computer
the .2 to send it a frame of data, the traffic would flow between California and London to get the physical MAC address of the .2 computer. All of that was “Officially” and technically to the letter of the question I suppose it would be on a LAN. However that LAN is spanning across North America and the Atlantic Ocean. That’s a pretty big freaking Broadcast domain.


Which really begs the question of a definition of a LAN anymore. does that really have a meaning? Is a Local Areal Network really spanning half way around the world? Does a LAN span around a city or state? What’s local now days?


It also calls into question something that Marion Evans and I talked about many times. He was always being factious but he would say “Let’s just make the whole world a big broadcast domain” He was implying about the poor design characteristics that were being employed on the pseudowire service that we were starting to roll out, looking ahead to the LAN service we were planning to roll out.



Probably not the best design practice, which is partially why I’ve always been of the opinion that at some point the WAN should pass through a router. I wouldn’t ever put a Switch on a VPLS. it really needs to make a Layer 3 hop so that some amount of Layer 3 intelligence can be used for directing the traffic as it leaves between a layer 2 domain and a Layer 3 domain.


Of course the question asker above could have been completely confused and not really understand the basic principles of the question they were asking? Technology is changing.

According to mercury news..


Juniper Networks reportedly for sale, shares in Sunnyvale company jump

I heard the rumor Monday, and then was checking around the web for more information. I’m trying to figure out if this is a tip and I should be buying JNPR shares or if this is just a rumor because of all the layoffs…

Juniper Networks shares jumped 11 percent Thursday after a news website said the Sunnyvale network gear maker had hired JP Morgan to evaluate possible bids, but a source close to the matter said there was no substance to the report.

Juniper’s shares jumped on Thursday morning as the benzinga.com report spread among investors, hitting a one-month high of $19.20 on the New York Stock Exchange before easing back to $18.

One bid is reported to be in the high $20s per share with data storage firm EMC mentioned recently as a potential buyer, benzinga.com reported late on Tuesday.

However, getting past the profit part of it (For me of course), would a EMC/JNPR merger make sense? Well with the recent development work that JNPR has done with the Qfabric, and EMC has recently certified the qfabric to work with their gear.



What does that mean? Well juniper is a 9 billion dollar company and EMC is a 53 Billion dollar company, or roughly 6times the size of JNPR. That’s not insignificant. They could buy them for the qfabric and spin the rest off as a small router company. Or they could keep the whole company, much as Brocade did when they purchased Foundry. That particular deal made a lot of sense, it gave brocade all the networking technology it needed and also let if have the cheaper data center switches without “partnering” with another networking company. If EMC had their own switching division. They might be able to go after total deals, rather than just going after the host and data services. They could go in with a complete soup to nuts solution with firewall and routing capabilities. That has to look attractive.


Well, shares look expensive today? $17.19
Maybe tomorrow.

Is the qfabric not going so well? I know it was a HUGE box. We basically looked at it and said
it’s viable for maybe 2 companies in the world….

A Juniper spokesperson declined to give specific information about the divisions to be affected by the layoffs, or when they will happen. In an emailed statement, the spokesperson wrote: “As we disclosed on our second quarter 2012 earnings conference call, Juniper is working to align its resources to improve productivity and effectiveness, enabling us to deliver our road-map for innovation and unprecedented value to customers and shareholders. As a result of this important initiative, we are reducing our workforce by approximately 500 people in functions across the company.”

Juniper also declined to address the QFabric rumor directly. “Innovation is the lifeblood of Juniper,” the Juniper spokesperson said. “We’ve consistently achieved the highest overall market growth in Ethernet switching, and customers continue to adopt QFabric. We are focused on delivering innovative solutions in the data center that drive revenue for customers.”

So corrections in the direction. It had to happen. If you only build a product and you build it so large nobody buys it, you cannot afford to continue to make it. I know they were coming out with smaller qfabric boxes and they have already hit the street, but I imagine you had a huge work force basically sitting around twitting their thumbs while the smaller boxes are just a subset of a larger box, probably not a lot to do, plus there wasn’t any revenue coming in while the smaller boxes were being built. A serious strategy error

A Juniper spokesperson declined to give specific information about the divisions to be affected …

Huawei 2012-10-07
Oh man, I’ve spelled Huawei about a hundred different ways. If I miss spell it again, Just look at the title of this post and remember that’s how it’s “supposed” to be spelled. I do it intentionally just because they have done a lot of things in the past to annoy me.


Remember back in the 90s or so when Cisco’s IOS was stolen and just a few months later a brand new Chinese company came out with a box that had an IOS identical to Cisco’s? Well I do that was waway. WhaWhey was summarily sued and if I recall correctly they settled it out of court to the tune of several dollars I’m sure.

Several years ago I asked them in a meeting what they had done, and they basically avoided my question. I’m sure there are a lot of political and other type issues still around that case. They can probably never talk about it.

They told me about two years ago that if they didn’t have the feature in their software that I wanted, they would just assign another couple hundred programers on that task to create it for me. Talk about a mobile work force. Also talking about a huge workforce. I wonder how many programmers they have working for them now? Thousands.

I went over to Beijing two years ago with my wife. We landed at the airport and had a bus ride between the airport and the hotel. I’ve been in some large cities before, but I have never in my life experienced such a mass of humanity. We were literally passing large dorm like structures, mile after mile after mile. It was awesome in magnitude. A funny story. The wife and I got off the buss and were surrounded by taxi cabbies. All trying to grab our bags to drive us to our hotel. We finally picked one who charged us $20.00 None of the others would take our fare after they heard our hotel. After the bus left, we found out why, we were in front of the hotel. The cabbie put our bags into his trunk, drove down to the corner and into the driveway of the hotel That was the Imperial Palace. Yeah, I splurged it was a very nice place and we had the presidential suite. I had to impress my wife :) anyway, went to the great wall of china, and saw the Tiananmen square. And did the other typical tourist things. I have several other really good stories to share about that trip. Although I never made it past the huawei shop. I bet I walked past at least one of their programmers.

They have really shaken things up in the Telecom world. With the US goberment coming out and saying: “DONT USE HUAWEI” or something close to that, and then them responding saying. “YOU STINKING AMERICANS ARE CHINESE BASHING” well I’m paraphrasing of course on both accounts. Could the commie red Chinese put spying software backdoor in their gear? Maybe, Did they? Maybe? Does their gear phone home to give information? Probably does. However here is a thought. I think it was Google that was using GPS to track everyone of their phones. So, not only did Google have information on user and just about everything else imaginable, they also had an exact location of everyone. Wow. And the US government is bitching about a couple packets being sent home to mother china?

Well, what’s next for this saga? I imagine the U.S. Senate will recommend that all Huawei’s be summarily pulled out of any sort of production network. Boiled in oil until dead, burned at the stake and then whatever is left of them to be hung by the neck along the border until the buzzards eat whats left of them.

So who all us using Huiwai? They stood up and said. companies. Dozens of companies, and then mentioned a couple mobile operators. I guess Huawei has the second largest share of Cell phones in the world. Why? I guess it’s because they have a cheap plentiful workforce that’s willing to work for just a few Yuan a day.

So, are you using WaWay? Are you worried about the Chinese spying on your data?

Oh man, I’ve spelled Huawei about a hundred different ways. If I miss spell it again, Just look at the title of this post and remember that’s how it’s “supposed” to be spelled. I do it intentionally just because they have done a lot of things in the …

A Chinese telecommunications company considered a threat to U.S. national security was linked to an elite Chinese military cyberwarfare group, according to a House committee report made public Monday.

Information, including email messages, supplied to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence reveals that the People’s Liberation Army cyberwarfare unit had sought research and development assistance from Huawei Technologies

Bill Gertz

here is the Full Report

I’ve read through most of the report and all I can say is wow. If I was a birther, I would have wished that the U.S. Government would have spent as much time investigating the propitarity of the candidates as what went into this report. They know almost everything there is to know about Mr. Ren.]]>