Articles on Networking - GURU advisor

Ubiquiti NanoStation AC: easy point-to-point and multi-point radio links

Details: Published: Friday, 08 February 2019 18:27; Written by Lorenzo Bedin

The need of extending wireless networks is a constant when working with network infrastructures. Usually the problem lies in designing and planning an architecture that maximizes the ratio between the number of access points and the surface covered, also given an economical constraint. However, in some situations radio connections can be helpful, for instance when there are just two points to connect, yet quite distant. In such a situation you can’t trust regular access points (including long-range units), you must choose a point-to-point (PtP) or multi-point (PtMP) solution. Ubiquiti offers a range of antennae suitable for this need, grouped by power and transmission: NanoBeam and NanoStation for connections up to 5km, LiteBeam, PowerBeam and AirFiber for connections up to 15km, and higher-end products capable of covering a distance of tens of kilometers. 

OWASP ZAP: a powerful tool to discover Websites vulnerabilities

Details: Published: Monday, 23 October 2017 11:41; Written by Riccardo Gallazzi

OWASP Zed Attack Proxy (ZAP) is an integrated tool dedicated to penetration testing that allows to identify vulnerabilities in Web apps and Websites. It’s an easy and flexible solution that can be used regardless of the proficiency level: it’s suitable for anyone, from a developer at the beginning with pentesting to professionals in the field.

ZAP is composed by two macro-section. The first one is an automated vulnerability scanner that can identify problems and provides a report for developers, sysadmins and security pros with all the details of discovered vulnerabilities in order to fix them.
The second one allows ZAP to work as a proxy and inspect the traffic and all HTTP/S requests and events -- there’s also the interesting capability of modifying them to analyze behaviour that differentiate from the norm or analyze their triggers which can be harmful to the system.

GFI LanGuard: network security scanner and patch management

Details: Published: Wednesday, 26 July 2017 15:06; Written by Roberto Beneduci

Properly keeping an IT infrastructure updated is a costly and weary activity: GFI’s LanGuard is a product conceived to structure and automate management process in a complete safety.

An example how dangerous is to have non updates systems is clearly shown by the very recent wave of infections by WannaCry, the ransomware that -albeit being targeted to a restricted number of users (they could have been way more had some remedies not been found promptly)- attacked Microsoft-based infrastructures in more than 150 countries. The ransomware exploited the EternalBlue vulnerability, which is available only on non-patched version of the operating system. Yet imagine what the outcome would have been if it targeted all Windows systems.

Pritunl: an enterprise and on-premises SDN based on OpenVPN

Details: Published: Friday, 20 May 2016 17:50; Written by Lorenzo Bedin

Pritunl is an open source platform capable of realizing distributed VPN networks. By leveraging the OpenVPN protocol it allows -according to the chosen licensing model- to setup virtual network architectures. In practice, it allows to easily connect devices inside or outside the walls, also in companies with two or more branches, creating a VPN managed with advanced rules and a centralized authentication system.Pritunl integrates several services of third parties like Amazon AWS VPC (Virtual Private Cloud, it’s a virtual network space in the Cloud available to users within the AWS suite) with automated failover and Single Sign On (SSO) authentication. Integration for the use of SSO include services like Google Apps, Slack, OneLogin Okta, DUO and Radius: each one of these service can be used to guarantee users the access to the Pritunl infrastructure with their own accounts and without having to use dedicated credentials. In case the Enterprise license is chosen, which allows the installation on an unlimited number of Pritunl server, the high availability with automated failover feature can be leveraged, also given the fact that there are no master nodes, instead each node acts as the same functional level of the others. Pritunl also integrates a server replication feature, thus offering an high level of scalability for clusters. With the aim of geographically distributed installations, the platform is based on the renowned MongoDB which offers an high level of reliability (in particular as the number of nodes and users grows) associated with the chance of replication.

A modular switch with 10GbE support by HP Enterprise: 5406R zl2

Details: Published: Friday, 20 May 2016 15:22; Written by Lorenzo Bedin

HPE (Hewlett Packard Enterprise) is a brand that needs no presentations in the networking world. Its high-end switch line features the Aruba 5406 zl2 switch, which is part of the family of modular switches Aruba 5400R.

In last year’s May, HP completed the acquisition of Aruba Networks, a leading provider of network solution and services, and it’s the name of the famous company to appear both in the name of the switch and on the Web management interface. The 5400R zl2 series aims to contexts where an high level of reliability is required in conjunction to a good degree of scalability. We have tried the model J9821A PoE+. We’d like to specify that, being modular solutions, the reference code of the chassis is J9850A, on top of which one or two management modules can be installed (J9827A, the controller) and up to 6 additional switch modules (32 Gigabit ports, SFP+ or 10GbE). The extractable trail for cooling fans, which is identified with J9831A, is considered as an autonomous module as well.

Naturally it’s a device conceived to be placed in racks, with an overall size of 4U, thus making it quite bulky and difficult to move. The unit we tried had three 32-port switching modules (J9550A) and a controller module.