@Jason said in What's your favorite brand for network gear?:

@Dashrender said in What's your favorite brand for network gear?:

@scottalanmiller said in What's your favorite brand for network gear?:

@Dashrender said in What's your favorite brand for network gear?:

Huawei could solve this by making their platform completely open. Basically only sell hardware and allow others to make their own firmware/software that runs on it.

Who would buy it then? Useless hardware without vertical support? What business would use that? That's the DD-WRT model. Great for hobbyists, but that's not what they are going for. They want business usage.

Well the hope would be that the FOSS environment would make awesome firmware for it, than you could KNOW didn't have a back doors.

Hardware itself can have backdoors

Heard the story where the NSA intercepted shipments of switches and routers from well-known brands just to open the package, install a custom firmware and repackage it and finally sent it to the customer?

We're living in an odd world, even Orwell wouldn't believe that I guess. Hardware can have backdoors, same for software. But even the NSA or the big red dragon need to use IP I guess, so we can at least place a firewall in front of everything.

As for FOSS, well, I had a look at this:. There are quite some Linux based OS's for switches out there, like Cumulus or OpenSwitch (http://mangolassi.it/topic/9388/openswitch-moves-under-linux-foundation-umbrella). This on some open switch (bare metal or SDN) like the ones from Quanta (http://www.qct.io/-c77c75c159) or SuperMicro (https://www.supermicro.nl/products/accessories/Networking/SSE-G3648B.cfm for example) would at least increase the situations about software backdoors, but won't solve the hardware backdoor problem. But having software and hardware separated, both can be more easily tested for backdoors. And THIS could in fact improve the situation.

Sadly, we are just not there yet: Bare metal and Linux/BSD in core networking is coming, but it will take many years to reach the average SMB. Right now, the whole open switch story is all about SDN in the datacenter, as far as I know.

@nadnerB said in What's your favorite brand for network gear?:

I don't have a favourite brand as I haven't used enough to have a well rounded opinion but I sure do appreciate:

• No Java in the GUI
• neat and tidy interface
• Good warranty (EnterraSys Lifetime warranty )
• Reliable
• Not cloud based (On ya bike, Meraki)
• High thermal resilience
• Well priced support (Hint: NOT Cisco)

No Java - good point. Got an old ProCurve still serving as an access switch which is running Java applets. PITA. Same for Adobe Flash in VMware vSphere (that's going to be replaced with a HTML5 frontend AFAIK).

Looks like I'm slowly returning to the land of the living.

Anyway, IT pro's version of Russian roulette:

https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/1650669-i-am-taking-a-quick-poll-user-account-control-uac-do-you-use-it-or

Post #2 is my favorite answer:

Post #23000

@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

I wonder how many websites are running a "how embarrassing is it for the people on SW" thread showing these kinds of things. They have to be out there. It's seriously bad. THIS is why companies don't trust their IT staff.

There are good things over at SW, can't say all is bad. And there are quite a bunch of knowledgeable ppl over there. But it's basically always "do my work, get a lollipop", "which AP/firewall/switch/storage to buy" and so on.

Seems to be a trend for years now that ppl post first and think later, if at all. What happens in case they are offline and every minute costs $£€¥?

@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

Only 80% would get it correct.

Probably... not everyone knows that you can control a power plant with ACPI events from your PC

@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@thwr said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

64%

Dear Lord!!!

I'm really waiting for the following question:

What is the primary function of the power button on your PC?

1. Turn on / wake up your PC
2. Shutdown the nearest nuclear plant
3. Make a coffee
4. Save all open files

64%

5:37h in the morning here, had a great night with like 2 to 3 hours of sleep. Hopefully just a cold, not a flu. Hate being sick.

@BBigford said in Mac Mini server - Frankenstein:

@thwr said in Mac Mini server - Frankenstein:

@BBigford Nice idea. Bought or repurposed / DIY case?

I bought this one on Amazon new for about $145... http://www.sonnettech.com/product/rackmacmini.html

Ah ok, thanks.

@scottalanmiller we should really have a "Frankenstein'd Projects" category.

Ah, looks like you stuffed that into the Cisco case?

@BBigford Nice idea. Bought or repurposed / DIY case?

Yeah, awesome. Like it.

Used HP earlier, but also Cisco, EnteraSys (now part of Extreme Networks), Nortel Networks, 3Com (before they were bought by HP) and Juniper. Like Juniper the most, clean and great management interface and FreeBSD behind the scenes.

Huawei made some interesting offers lately, for example the CloudEngine 6800 series CE6810-32T16S4Q TOR switch. They are quite cheap and Huawei got great knowledge in that field from their telco and T1/Backbone background.

@JaredBusch said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

Want to help me install it next month?

Oh, got another week of holidays next month, so yeah, why not. Want my email address for the boarding card?