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Hope you never notice the outages I cause. Knows where the RFC2616 bodies are buried. recurse.com SP'2 18 / "The bgp.tools guy"

Follow me using: @benjojo@benjojo.co.uk in your client

benjojo posted 20 Feb 2025 15:45 +0000

On the internet these days, I guess some do know you are a dog

Ines Kalz, Founder Finance and Legal, © 2025 DD-IX Dresden Internet Exchange e.V.

benjojo posted 18 Feb 2025 20:03 +0000

I wonder what the history of the Cisco CLI's default of "Any unknown command is now a (slow) DNS lookup because maybe you want to telnet ?" is.

It seems to be on almost every single IOS image I've ever touched, so it's got to have been implemented very early

The amount of devices that must have no ip domain-lookup at the top of the config must be staggering. Why does it remain this way.

It's 100% one of the more mundane uses for a time machine

benjojo posted 17 Feb 2025 17:59 +0000

Today in "Carefully worded commit messages":

A github screenshot, showing a commit with the description "Add (actual) detection support for IS-IS"

benjojo posted 14 Feb 2025 13:23 +0000

New bgp.tools tag name dropped

A page with a tag that says "Sorry, We appear to be broken. while the issue has been logged on our side, it might help to send this following message to the admin. ---- BEGIN AGE"

benjojo posted 14 Feb 2025 12:42 +0000

Super scummy for microsoft to auto upgrade (at the added cost of an extra £30 a year) people to a AI plan, and not offer a "actually I don't use any of that stuff" can I not pay that £30 a year?

And then only when you are at the cancel page, it's like "🥺 oh sorry do you want the old deal back? 🥺"

For anyone else, you don't even have to get that far into the cancel page for this. So it's easy to save £30 a year with this.

Effective 14 February 2025, the price for Microsoft 365 Personal subscriptions will increase from GBP 5.99* per month to GBP 8.49* per month. To continue with the new price, no action is needed—your payment method on file will be automatically charged. To make changes to your subscription plan or turn off recurring billing, visit your Microsoft account at least two days before your next billing date. /  The next image is a screenshot of the cancel page for Office 365, but with the old 5.99 plan as a downgrade option Effective 14 February 2025, the price for Microsoft 365 Personal subscriptions will increase from GBP 5.99* per month to GBP 8.49* per month. To continue with the new price, no action is needed—your payment method on file will be automatically charged. To make changes to your subscription plan or turn off recurring billing, visit your Microsoft account at least two days before your next billing date. /  The next image is a screenshot of the cancel page for Office 365, but with the old 5.99 plan as a downgrade option

benjojo posted 14 Feb 2025 12:36 +0000

I hate what the AI people have done to one of the better emojis ✨

They did my boy dirty

benjojo posted 13 Feb 2025 15:45 +0000

Rapture on the Elizabeth Line

a photo of the seating on the London Elizabeth line train platform, nobody is sitting on the seeds however the white concrete wall underneath it has the silhouettes of people due to the dirt and greece left behind by people leaning on the walls

benjojo posted 12 Feb 2025 17:52 +0000

Wow, I can't tell if I am too deepfried from honk, or if I've been spoilt by honk, the rest of the AP/Fedi eco system is a lot more jank/less functionality than I expected

benjojo reposted 12 Feb 2025 17:40 +0000
original: bgptools@social.bgp.tools

After sitting on the decision for quite a while, bgp.tools will be switching away from posting updates on X.

Customers and users can now follow this account, the bluesky account https://bsky.app/profile/bgp.tools

I'm the not going to be publicising this on X itself, because it's just going to attract unhelpful attention that I don't think it's going to be very useful to anybody.

benjojo posted 12 Feb 2025 17:25 +0000

urgh, my anti-flood stuff ate all of the webfinger requests for my new @bgptools / @bgptools@bgp.tools , and now it seems most mastodon instances dont believe it exists

benjojo posted 10 Feb 2025 17:51 +0000

Ah yes, the mythical 24GB DDR4 DIMM

A BIOS output, showing one DIMM as 24GB, this is not possible in any other way other than a failure on DDR4

benjojo posted 10 Feb 2025 16:07 +0000

Introducing, my new bot @transfers ( @transfers@bgp.tools )

Using the stuff I built for the IP transfer history feature on bgp.tools, this bot will now post all of the new IP/ASN transfers (with a 24-48 hour delay) that the website observes, plus a rough estimate of what the market value for the IPv4 addresses are being moved around are worth

A post listing, the most recent post is: "ELITETELE.COM PLC" transferred 193.93.148.0/22 to "Systemhost Limited" (Estimated Market Value: $32.77 K)

benjojo reposted 09 Feb 2025 20:40 +0000
original: halcy@icosahedron.website

Updated the post, here is, as it were, the money shot.

You can see that the frequency on the EU side goes low and then rises while the one on Baltic side goes high and then falls right before sync - I wonder if that was intentional! But in any case, you can very clearly see the point where they sync! so this experiment was as far as I am concerned a full success!

https://halcy.de/blog/2025/02/09/measuring-power-network-frequency-using-junk-you-have-in-your-closet/ #BalticSynchro

A plot showing, above, my measurements and data from f50hz.de, and below, the difference between the two time series. The moment where the grids sync is very clearly visible.

benjojo posted 08 Feb 2025 21:46 +0000

/me clicks eject "PCI Simple Communications Controller"

_*ping* noise comes from inside chassis_

A windows screenshot of the "Eject Device" task bar tray feature, showing many devices, the "Eject PCI Simple Communications Controller" option is highlighted, however other options do exist for pci device, red hat virtIO ethernet adapter, USB Root Hub, and Red Hat VirtIO SCSI Disk Device

benjojo posted 06 Feb 2025 22:25 +0000

Is this just a thing about getting older, or is it just that everything is happening all of the time at the moment?

benjojo posted 06 Feb 2025 20:01 +0000

urgh, I don't know how Arthur Andersen did it, when I try to (scan and) shred at even a modest pace my shredder overheats and locks out.

Are there some secret "accounting firm grade" paper shredders?

benjojo posted 06 Feb 2025 11:42 +0000

I'm doing some well needed scanning and shredding of old letters, and I just came across this 2017 letter from Hargreaves Lansdown claiming that brexit is likely not going to be that bad

"""
Nevertheless, what seems clear to me is that the vote to leave the EU has so far not been anywhere near the economic disaster many predicted
"""

Oh if they could see into the future

A scanned letter with the critical part being " Nevertheless, what seems clear to me is that the vote to leave the EU has so far not been anywhere near the economic disaster many predicted"

benjojo posted 06 Feb 2025 00:15 +0000

OH HELL NO.

This is my name on a version of the Glue pizza/Gasoline spaghetti moment.

Other than shitposting about EVPN on fedi and maybe IRC, I've not done anything publicly to do with EVPN.

Urghhhh

Google search query results for "benjojo evpn" and the AI overview is "Benjojo has written blog posts about a variety of topics, including Ethernet switches, SFPs, and IX networks. EVPN, or Ethernet Virtual Private Network, is a WAN technology that's often used in data centers and campuses"

benjojo posted 05 Feb 2025 20:07 +0000

Thinking back to around that (2017-2020~) time where my primary phone had basically a stock-ish android camera setup.

I don't think the phone took very good photos almost all of the time, but there's this weird aesthetic that it sometimes nailed (sort of a dreaming in space kind of feeling) where the HDR would combine to make something quite unique and appealing, while also being a signature to these kinds of cheap phones.

I get oddly nostalgic when I see the "overprocessed HDR" aesthetic in other peoples clearly cheap android phone photos, I suppose in the same way that some people adore the ascetic that very cheap/broken film cameras give

(Sorry not alt text here, and if I don't add alt text my fedi software does weird stuff) (Sorry not alt text here, and if I don't add alt text my fedi software does weird stuff) (Sorry not alt text here, and if I don't add alt text my fedi software does weird stuff) (Sorry not alt text here, and if I don't add alt text my fedi software does weird stuff)

benjojo posted 05 Feb 2025 18:16 +0000

"I miss you, too" being suggested by machine just feels like the ultimate "mechanization of conversation" by allowing the outsourcing thought in what are intimate/vulnerable moments. I don't really know how to describe this, but it really does feel quite disheartening


I have a Pixel 7, and google appears to have taken the stance that the feature that they put on gmail where they try and guess a appropriate sentence to reply with, should also be taken onto the keyboard on phones.

And (IMO) there is some kind of use in this with email, as it turns out that many emails can simply just be responded with "OK"/"yes"/"go for it", and that's basically what the gmail interface excels at (I've never seen it attempt to suggest anything more complex).

I've left this feature on my phone for a while a sort of "useless but i'm not going to get out of my way to disable it", until recently where I've got this suggested reply which kind of put a bunch of existential dread in to me.

This being a google-ism of course, trying to disable this feature is quite difficult because you not only have to go and disable it on "gboard" but you also have to go and find a page about 5 taps into the settings page to actually stop the UI of the phone itself from trying to suggest the message as a tool tip (see pictured). I would be surprised if many people have.

It all just seems... sterile. It's a cliche sure, but it does make me wonder for the future if we hand over moments like this over to word models of the average person replying.

A cropped photo of a signal message text box, with a system popup/tool tip of a suggested reply of "I miss you, too".

benjojo posted 05 Feb 2025 15:53 +0000

I've lost track of how many "Updates on Lets Encrypt Subscriber Agreement & Ending Expiration Notification" I've gotten already

Turns out, I am inconsistent with email addresses!

benjojo posted 04 Feb 2025 19:09 +0000

Talking of ping quirks.

If you have a IP address with more than one PTR on it's reverse DNS like so:

$ dig -x x::6969 +short
hoho.b621.net.
haha.b621.net.
hehe.b621.net.

If you ping it (on seemingly older versions of ping) it will pick a random PTR to display per ping.

Resulting in amusing displays like:

# ping hehe.b621.net
PING hehe.b621.net(haha.b621.net (x::6969)) 56 data bytes
64 bytes from haha.b621.net (x::6969): icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.094 ms
64 bytes from hoho.b621.net (x::6969): icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0.104 ms
64 bytes from hehe.b621.net (x::6969): icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=0.110 ms
64 bytes from hehe.b621.net (x::6969): icmp_seq=4 ttl=64 time=0.136 ms
64 bytes from hoho.b621.net (x::6969): icmp_seq=5 ttl=64 time=0.132 ms
^C
--- hehe.b621.net ping statistics ---
5 packets transmitted, 5 received, 0% packet loss, time 4075ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.094/0.115/0.136/0.016 ms

This was noticed because for some reason, one of Google's net infra IPs has 3 different PTRs, in two different city metros

$ dig -x 216.58.201.110 +short
prg03s02-in-f110.1e100.net.
prg03s02-in-f14.1e100.net.
lhr48s48-in-f14.1e100.net.

benjojo posted 04 Feb 2025 18:36 +0000

When a prefix ( 172.224.198.0/24 ) flaps so hard that every ping gives you a new router TTL expired. Bonus points in that it once actually got to it's destination!

$ ping 172.224.198.1
PING 172.224.198.1 (172.224.198.1) 56(84) bytes of data.
From 23.197.75.102 icmp_seq=1 Time to live exceeded
From 129.250.4.148 icmp_seq=2 Time to live exceeded
From 23.210.55.38 icmp_seq=3 Time to live exceeded
From 129.250.2.175 icmp_seq=4 Time to live exceeded
From 129.250.2.93 icmp_seq=5 Time to live exceeded
From 129.250.2.92 icmp_seq=6 Time to live exceeded
From 23.197.64.65 icmp_seq=7 Time to live exceeded
From 129.250.7.17 icmp_seq=8 Time to live exceeded
From 129.250.4.222 icmp_seq=9 Time to live exceeded
From 129.250.3.12 icmp_seq=10 Time to live exceeded
From 129.250.2.175 icmp_seq=11 Time to live exceeded
64 bytes from 172.224.198.1: icmp_seq=12 ttl=53 time=21.8 ms
From 5.158.213.66 icmp_seq=13 Time to live exceeded

( a good spot by @basil )

benjojo posted 04 Feb 2025 15:26 +0000

Oh come on, what a cop out of a danger sign.

Tell me where the danger is!

It generic warning signs stuck on a door that says building sites are dangerous keep out but with the standard ISO warning signage

benjojo posted 31 Jan 2025 19:18 +0000

I wonder how often on live DJ gigs is there a talkback style RF channel open with what is going out to the monitors/amps, and how plausible it is to bring a not-bomb-looking phone+SDR setup to dump it during a gig.

In unrelated news, I can't wait for a more clean version of whatever this ID to come out

benjojo posted 31 Jan 2025 16:33 +0000

Well, I guess "fuck me" for trying the greener option I guess

A "trainline" screenshot with "You have been blocked."

benjojo reposted 30 Jan 2025 17:36 +0000
original: jonty@chaos.social

Turns out the cure for impostor syndrome is discovering quite how incompetent the person who previously did the job was

benjojo reposted 30 Jan 2025 16:23 +0000
original: benjojo@benjojo.co.uk

My best guess is on a reasonably loaded Intel SP1 system, a SSH connection setup takes 0.007 Joules of power.

A random machine I picked out has 15200 SSH connection setups a day

0.007 * 15200 = 106.4J ~ 0.0000279 kwH

A rough estimate on the amount of accessible SSH servers is around 16,280,000 (based on some scanning stuff from 2 years ago)

16,280,000 * 0.0000279 kwH = 454.212 kwH (a day)

or a constant ish 18.925kw of power.

And that is only assuming one party , so likely 2x, so all of the SSH bruteforces going around is costing around 38kW of power.

on one hand, not that bad (there are some DCs that can put that into a single rack), on the other hand, that's quite a lot of wasted CPU energy

benjojo posted 30 Jan 2025 15:37 +0000

I wonder what the overall global power consumption is caused by SSH brute force attempts.

I guess I need need to figure out how many joules a SSH connection setup costs on a average system ...

benjojo posted 30 Jan 2025 12:18 +0000

Heh, I've reached the bgp.he.net top {N} IX Participation list with the bgp.tools route collector!

There are a good 20~ other IXs still in progress (some slower than others)

This also reminds me that I should probably figure out porting AS212232 away from my name and to the actual bgp.tools legal entity

the bgp.he.net UI for " Internet Exchange Report "  -> "Exchange Participants" -> " IX Participation Count ", the top is Cloudflare at 338 IXP, and the list is 20 networks long, I am number 18 with 96 IXPs

benjojo posted 28 Jan 2025 23:03 +0000

I feel like I am rapidly approaching the LD50 of supplier security/legal onboarding surveys this month

benjojo posted 27 Jan 2025 19:57 +0000

MEMS devices purely exist for that scanning election microscope that speaks to the "scary alien tech" vibe that everyone fears.

benjojo posted 27 Jan 2025 17:19 +0000

Love getting this stuff over SSH:

Message from syslogd@ordat at Jan 27 17:15:00 ...
 kernel:[791344.547831] Internal error: Oops: 96000004 [#1] PREEMPT SMP

Message from syslogd@ordat at Jan 27 17:15:00 ...
 kernel:[791344.569675] Code: f90013f5 f9418014 f9404e95 d503201f (f94016a0) 

It's like seeing the smoke outside of the firework factory just before it explodes

benjojo posted 23 Jan 2025 17:23 +0000

Really quite considerate for the severe weather to respect the border of Northern Ireland

a Map of the UK overlaid are Yellow and Red weather warnings, in Ireland the warnings stop directly on the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland

benjojo posted 22 Jan 2025 00:19 +0000

Hmmm, did NTT As2914 and Arelion AS1299 depeer in EU? Seemingly everything in the EU between them right now goes via the East Coast USA...

(see examples of London-London going via the US, but seemingly this is also happens FRA-FRA)

Unsure if this is a maintenance, since surely the whole of the EU would not go at once?

Maybe just a misconfig or interesting localpref? Surely that would not happen on both ends though...

NTT and Arelion looking glasses showing London to London going via the USA NTT and Arelion looking glasses showing London to London going via the USA

benjojo posted 21 Jan 2025 21:21 +0000

You know, some are saying that AI will one day get free will, but they have been overlooking ceph all this time!

The average ceph installation seems to have way too much free will and has no problem in automatically doing things that either block or generate a lot of IOPS at seemingly the worst possible time

benjojo reposted 20 Jan 2025 22:21 +0000
original: luna@pony.social

closing all my jira tickets as “by design, won’t fix” because the purpose of a system is what it does

benjojo posted 20 Jan 2025 17:05 +0000

The debian java/JRE/JDK situation seems insane.

bookworm (stable) is shipping JRE 17, lots of applications require at least 21, Trixie (next stable) is shipping JRE 21, the the current openJDK JRE version is 23

Most of the time if you search for the errors caused by out of date JRE's you get "just install Oracle JDK" with instructions, but as far as I can squint that comes with some licencing payment obligation. All of this feels like putting your head into a alligators mouth!

(Do not reply "use nix/arch")

benjojo posted 20 Jan 2025 12:52 +0000

Took apart a DWDM XFP optic left over from the 140km TOSLINK stuff, A lovely person sent a load over that they no longer needed and they were part of my back up plan if more optics didn't work

Anyway it seems like they would not have worked anyway because the chip is a
GN2010EA that has CDR (my enemy)

The Receiver/Transmitter Optical Sub Assembly (ROSA/TOSA) may be useful for future fun though, Especially since the TOSA seems to have the DWDM Channel written on it, implying that it's statically tuned for that wavelength...

A XFP optic with a the lid taken off, inside are two laser modules and a chip with GN2010EA written on it, one module has "53" scribbled on it A XFP optic with a the lid taken off, inside are two laser modules and a chip with GN2010EA written on it, one module has "53" scribbled on it