DEINE SUCHERGEBNISSE.

Munich and Weiterstadt, 26th of July 2022 siticom & Isovalent partner in network transformation projects siticom is fascinated by network transformation projects for global financial institutions that need to collect and distribute data in high performance and low latency while making sure it holds up to the highest standards of security. Another part of the transformation is the move to cloud-native workloads that are highly distributed, containerized applications that are orchestrated with Kubernetes. Therefore, siticom partnered with Isovalent, the company behind the Cilium project that can provide networking, observability, and security in cloud-native environments. Some of the use cases we solved: SRE application flow insights Capacity & performance management Realtime anomaly detection What is Cilium? Cilium is an open-source project by Isovalent to provide networking, security, and observability to platform teams operating Kubernetes environments across clouds, clusters, and premises. At the foundation of Cilium is a new Linux kernel technology called eBPF, which enables the dynamic insertion of powerful security, visibility, and networking control logic into the Linux kernel. eBPF provides high-performance networking, multi-cluster, and multi-cloud capabilities, advanced load balancing, transparent encryption, extensive network security capabilities, transparent observability, and much more. "Ciliums with Hubble/Tetragon brings great value to the visibility stacks in critical projects. The software is not only practical and appreciated by the whole team. We are also in constant exchange with Isovalent in terms of support and training - to a point that we even co-develop together with our customers and Isovalent to enhance visibility for SR-IOV and multicast networking." Thomas Weishäupl, Principal Consultant Network Transformation Workshops and Collab-Events pave partnership The collaboration between Isovalent and siticom quickly evolved into a trustful partnership with lots of opportunities to learn from each other. An example of the collaboration was our joint workshop to introduce the siticom team to Isovalent Cilium Enterprise followed by an interactive hands-on workshop where our engineers were able to deep-dive into the broad feature set of Cilium. "siticom's reputation and comprehensive knowledge impressed us from the beginning. They have demonstrated their competence as a business partner with a focus on solving particularly challenging use cases for their customers. We could not be happier to have siticom as part of our ecosystem as a trusted advisor for next-generation cloud-native transformation projects." - Philipp Meier - Global Head of Partner Ecosystem Meeting the team and discussing challenges and use cases will be possible e.g at Kubernetes Community Days as well as frequent Webinars. What are our workshops all about? You will learn how Isovalent Cilium Enterprise provides eBPF- based networking, observability, and security platform for Kubernetes environments across clouds, clusters, and premises. eBPF is the new standard to program Linux kernel capabilities safely and efficiently without requiring the need to change kernel source code or load kernel modules. It has enabled a new generation of high-performance tooling covering networking, security, and observability use cases. Building on eBPF's capabilities, Isovalent Cilium Enterprise functions as the Kubernetes data plane. It provides cloud-native insights and is independent of legacy approaches like iptables and sidecars.​​​​​​​ For whom is this suitable? Technical-Platform Teams Security Teams DevOps Engineers Plattform Engineers SRE's Security Team anyone who is interested in If you are interested, please contact our team!

At a time when broadband expansion in Germany is being driven forward at full speed, resources and implementation capacities are in short supply. Against this backdrop, it is clear how important strategic partnerships are for jointly advancing digital infrastructures. Such an effective cooperation has formed between siticom and the Spanish company Zener. Concentrated expertise for accelerated progress The partnership between siticom and Zener offers an approach to dealing with the challenges of broadband rollout. The focus is on making the most of each company's strengths to create synergies and drive rollout in record time. While Zener focuses its main attention on the practical implementation of the fiber rollout - starting with civil engineering work and ending with the installation of the infrastructure - siticom takes over the planning, coordination and digitalized project management in a proven cooperation model. Strong together: The advantages for contractors and customers The focus of the construction companies can thus be entirely on implementation, while siticom contributes its extensive expertise in the area of fully digitized planning and project management. This not only enables accelerated implementation, but also higher quality in the expansion. The module-based collaboration model between siticom and the civil engineering companies revolutionizes the planning processes and creates room for optimized coordination. siticom services at a glance: siticom's responsibilities span a range of tasks: Comprehensive planning: Planning and project planning for fiber optic expansion areas are carried out in an established partnership with the civil engineering company. This covers all phases of planning. Technical expertise: siticom provides advice and support on technical issues and ensures that client-specific requirements are met. Digital processes: With the help of digitized collaboration processes and tools, siticom creates efficient workflows and seamless coordination. Communication and coordination: Solution-oriented coordination meetings with local authorities, utility companies and other stakeholders are essential for smooth expansion. Detailed planning: Route planning and the preparation of route and site securing are carried out carefully. Approval procedures and documentation: The processing of all types of approval procedures and detailed documentation are part of the service package. Bid management: siticom determines material requirements and ensures economical bid management. Economic considerations: The partnership enables accurate economic considerations that benefit all parties involved in the long term. Shaping the digital future together By distributing the tasks, the strengths of both companies can be used optimally. This not only accelerates the rollout, but also ensures the quality and sustainability of the project. With over 1,500 households, more than 290 km of fiber optic cable laid and distances of over 100 km, siticom and Zener are proving that they are boldly tackling the challenges of broadband expansion and shaping the digital future together. This illustrates the commitment of both companies to nationwide and future-oriented broadband expansion. Here you will find our entire construction kit around the topic of planning services for civil engineering.

During the flood of the century in July 2021 in Rhineland-Palatinate and North Rhine-Westphalia, not only were hundreds of people killed, but numerous houses, roads and infrastructure were also completely destroyed in this disaster. Only a few months after the flood in the Ahr Valley, reconstruction could begin, most of the debris and mud was removed from the areas and remaining houses were drained. A new high-pressure natural gas pipeline was also built through the lower Ahr Valley in a record time of just 100 days to supply residents there during winter temperatures. In December 2021, the Connect Energie company also started planning and building the Telekom fiber optic network in the Dernau, Rech and Mayschoß areas. In cooperation with Connect Energie, siticom is responsible for the entire planning and preparatory route securing of the network. More than 42 kilometers of fiber optic main cables and another 190 kilometers of branch lines, starting from 28 newly planned Telekom network distributors, will be planned to reach the households. A total of around 2,000 households should therefore be able to benefit from this. In addition, the new fiber optic connection will not incur any costs for the owners. Planning is expected to be completed by the end of March 2022 and network construction by mid-2023. Sources: https://www.presseportal.de/pm/9077/5120847 https://www.wiwo.de/politik/deutschland/hochwasser-das-ahrtal-hofft-auf-den-wiederaufbau/27871592.html

“Bring people together and stuff happens – sometimes unexpectedly. This is the essence of siticom innersource and the reason why it works.” Necati Mercan, consultant at siticom siticom practices a variation of InnerSource to increase transparency within the company. All employees can participate in different projects, drive innovation and allow chances for cross-stack and cross-team collaboration. This our view on our innersource strategy – Would you like to share yours? First of all: What is innersource at siticom? InnerSource describes the method of adapting open source strategies and workflows within an organization. For us it is essentially about collaboration and transparency, where we, as a company and as individuals, become better at what we do. innersource brings with it a whole host of benefits: Increase decentralization and cross-stack collaboration Stimulate innovation and improve communication Gain, share and preserve knowledge Open development environment Departments work together more intensively Possibility of higher code quality and acceleration of deployments Our goal is to learn and adapt applicable measures at siticom so that they bring these tangible benefits to us and eventually achieve better employee and customer satisfaction. innersource is driven by our colleagues and each individual contributes. We practice it across all stacks as one of our guiding principles in our agile project management. How do we achieve an innersource culture? For successful innersource adaptation, it is necessary to be open and transparent with all processes, decisions, work and communication with each other. It is important to share ideas, successes and failures in order to grow together as a company. We create room to enable an open discussion culture and invite our active collaborators, stakeholders and others to participate. siticom uses modern tooling and communication infrastructure and adapts these to the communities needs and culture. Culture generates content. We actively bring together potentials for growing, enabling, discovering and researching interesting topics that might become a temporary or permanent innersource initiative at siticom. We listen when someone comes up with an idea. We develop along the needs and interests of us. The knowledge we multiply We have many interested stakeholders in the area of network test automation, infrastructure as code and cloud deployment. Projects range from our 5G Test Laboratory to infrastructure planning and network operations. (read here more about the wide range of siticom projects) Therefore the initial content is heavily influenced by that, but not limited to that. Participation is contribution. It is important for us to share knowledge and prevent the emergence of knowledge silos. Our guiding principles apply to the innersource initiative itself as well and we are curious where this journey will lead us. As a team we experience the benefits of these practices every day – and would love to share our insights with you. What is your opinion?

It is time. We have been investigating quite a lot of ideas around the DLTs and Blockchain. Really fancy for us looks the outlook on IOTA. Reason enough to invest some time to write down some thoughts about in a Insight. Please look for more details here: https://www.siticom.online/tangle-dlts-5g-iot-part-1

A good introductory paper from the Bitkom Communication Technologies Working Group for a brief and easy-to-understand technological classification of the topic. At https://www.bitkom.org/Bitkom/Publikationen/Handreichung-Open-RAN the paper is available. We look forward to further cooperation with Bitkom in the communication technology working group. As a long-standing member of the digital association of Germany, Bitkom e.V., we are in close contact with over 2,700 companies from the digital economy and are vigorously promoting the digitization of the economy, society and administration. Among other things, we support Bitkom's ambitions in the following bodies: Member of the main board / State spokesman for Hesse-Germany (Jürgen Hatzipantelis) Working group Digital Transformation Working group on corporate law & compliance Working group Industry 4.0 Market & Strategy Working group Communication Technologies ​

Based on the last Insight, DLTs - Networked Computers Come To An Agreement we received a lot of positive feedback, but also questions. We want to answer some of them within this blog post. TOKENIZATION AS AN ESSENTIAL PART OF DIGITALIZATION CORE FUNCTIONALITY OF A DLT BYZANTIN GENERALS PROBLEM – CONSENS PROOF OF STAKE PROOF OF WORK These elements will be part of our use case „Using DLTs for tamperproof documents“ within our series about DLTs. We let you know as soon if the Insight is available. This article is available in German as well. See here https://www.siticom.online/post/konsens-im-dlt TOKENIZATION AS AN ESSENTIAL PART OF DIGITALIZATION Tokenization as a next important step for digital assets got the potential to change the global finance markets. Token: Digitalized assets based on a distributed ledgers are named token. A token can have a specific function or value, which enables various use cases. Tokenization: It is about the digital copy of a value or an asset including the according rights and responsibilities, as well the possibility to transfer the ownership. Tokenizing „real world assets“ enable to digitize and to integrate them easy, tamperproof and cost efficient within digital processes. Real world assets connected directly to the digital world will unfold unused potentials. CORE FUNCTIONALITY OF A DLT What is the core functionality of a DLT? DLTs store information tamper-proof and reliable. It is important to understand that the technological implementation of this main task can take place in different ways. However, it doesn’t change the users experiences in working with the DLT. A first possible approach is the implementation as known from the Bitcoin network, as a so called Blockchain. A second possible approach is the implementation as a Directed Acyclic Graph. Both variants have similar challenges, storing information tamper-proof and unchangeable. Compared to a typical centralized application like PayPal, DLT’s act decentralized. This approach promises higher security aspects as we know it from typical centralized applications today. Why is this approach more secure? Let us draw a simple everyday scenario. Imagine you transmit your yearly energy-consumption digitally to he website of your local energy provider. Imagine your provider is attacked by a ransomware (as it happens too often nowadays). How can you proof the authenticity of your submitted data? In a centralized environment: You can’t proof your data or be certain, that the system isn’t corrupted. Within a decentralized system: 51% of the distributed active nodes would need to provide a wrong value to declare this as valid. Compared to a centralized system attacking a decentralized network is by far more complex and difficult to accomplish. Decentralized systems have their own challenges though. How can you proof that a participant tells the truth in a decentralized network without a single entity which controls the network? BYZANTIN GENERALS PROBLEM - CONSENSUS Finding consensus within a dynamic environment isn’t easy for humans nor machines. It requires decisions to find consensus, for example “yes” or “no”, “valid” or “not valid” or to decide for an opinion if there are multiple options. And if you think about the decision process, it’s always a matter of trust. Which opinion to trust? Who says the truth? Which participant is the right one to ask? A summary of one of the dilemmas, you can find within this YouTube video. Those who don’t like videos can go directly to the following chapter, where we wrote a summary for you. Source https://youtu.be/LoGx_ldRBU0 Let’s have a look at the issue itself, first. If we assume, that we have a flat and equal network where all nodes have the same information and get all the same new information. If this is the case, we have no issues. If everybody plays the game according to the rules, there’s no problem. To be a fully decentralized network, it is important all nodes are equal, and the network is flat. If this isn’t the case and one node have a predefined higher weight than the others by delegation, this is not decentralized anymore. But what will happen within a fully decentralized network, if one node has different information? First, it must be sure, the information is valid and follows the rules of the network. If this is true, the information must be shared within the network and the network must accept the information as true as well. If one node tries to cheat by sending different information to various nodes for example, how can this be controlled, how to trust the information within the network? First, the nodes must talk to each other and must ask the other nodes for their opinion or better said received information. If the nodes within the network talk to each other, they will find the node which is sending different information to the nodes easily. If the nodes realize now that one node sent different information to the others, they can identify this node and ignore it finding the correct answer. This can be done until only three participants are left within a consensus process. And now if there is one malicious node left within the three, we reach a tie situation. At the end if there’s a tie situation, a predefined solution will be chosen, and the information will be dropped as invalid which keeps the data structure clean. As a conclusion you can say, if you control 51% of a decentralized network, you can control the network. But this is more difficult than taking over just one centralized unit. How to avoid someone take over 51% of the network? There are many approaches to avoid someone taking over the network and further methods are still under development. Two of the most common methods we will explain today. PROOF OF STAKE One variant of finding a secure consensus is the so called “Proof of Stake” (PoS). A random mechanism decides which nodes are allowed to produce the next block and decide which transactions are included. The new block will be verified from randomly chosen and trustworthy nodes. To get a trustworthy node within a PoS network, a predefined amount of token needs to be stored for each node. Additionally, a random mechanism chooses between the token secured nodes, to make it more difficult to say which nodes are included within the consensus process. The chosen nodes are allowed to participate within consensus and one of the nodes can build the new block. The reward for doing so are some new tokens, which are shared between the people which locked their tokens to secure the node. Locking token within a node is called „staking“, this is where the name comes from. The basic idea behind is, those who invest money and bind this to a node, are not interested in doing harm to the network. They are interested in a node which work according to the rules of the network, to get the rewards and to proof the reliability of the system. Another variant of the so called PoS-consensus mechanism is the so called „delegated Proof of Stake“ (dPoS), where nodes, which can become staking nodes, need to be elected by all token owners, the so-called community. If the community don’t trust the node provider, they can’t participate and will not get rewards. This is another hurdle a malicious node provider would have to take, but this also leads to a more centralized network. PROOF OF WORK Talking about ensuring consensus algorithms, we must mention the first and still most common one. It is used within the Bitcoin network and is often controversy discussed. Not because it is insecure, but the amount of energy it requires. The Bitcoin network uses a so-called PROOF OF WORK (PoW) mechanism to secure the consensus. Simply explained, those who add blocks and participate within the consensus, have to participate within a battle about calculation power. To participate within this battle and to get rewards, you must invest in special hardware and energy. The more calculation power you provide, the bigger your chance to get more block rewards. Proof of work requires solving a cryptographic riddle from the participants with processing power which is getting more difficult the more calculation power is within the network. Without trying to solve the riddle, you can’t participate within the consensus process or getting elected generating a new block. Those who do the work and try to solve the riddle, are so called „MINER’s“, they mine for the reward. As we know it from PoS, there is a reward for sharing the processing power with the network. The so-called block rewards are generated out of nothing and added to the network. Beside the block rewards the transaction fees, paid for every transaction, will be shared between the miners as well. The new generated bitcoins for each new block and the paid fees keep the network alive. This explains why the Bitcoin network requires as much energy. Solving the more and more difficult riddles requires processing power and this consumes energy. Beside the already mentioned examples like “Proof of Stake” and “Proof of Work” other methods in finding consensus exist. As another example we want to name the „Fast Probabilistic Consensus with Weighted Votes“, which doesn’t require any staking or miners. At the end, the method of finding consensus need to fit the use case. Below you will find additional information and examples for consensus mechanism: https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2021/05/the-problem-of-distributed-consensus/ https://emurgo.io/en/blog/explain-proof-of-stake-pos-dpos https://learn.bybit.com/blockchain/what-is-proof-of-work-in-blockchain/ Fast probablistic consensus: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2006.00928.pdf We want to give credit to „Schmucklos“, who provides an excellent source for information on his webpage https://iota-einsteiger-guide.de/. However, this is only available in German.

Our series around DLTs continues. Under the following link "A first step to tamper-proof documents based on Distributed Ledger Technologies" you will find further insights and a "hands-on" example with the help of the ITOA Tangle. Have lots of fun with it!

The martial word bootcamp sounds like pressure at first: in the shortest possible time, newcomers have to be able to work on projects and experienced colleagues have to be trained in new tools - as efficiently as possible. Our test automation bootcamp does this, but works completely without a drill sergeant; made possible by a pronounced InnerSource thinking in the team. #robotframework #innersource #learning What is the Bootcamp and why was it created? No matter if you are a new software developer, a network technician or a long-time DevOps colleague: Everyone at siticom can suddenly come into contact with test automation and has an almost incalculable level of knowledge about it. So off to the boot camp: the basis is a very well documented tutorial on the subject. The focus is on Robot Framework, a complex of open source tools that can be used for testing and automating software processes. What is Robot? Robot Framework is widely used as a testing tool for Acceptance Test Driven Development (ATDD) in a variety of applications and increasingly for Robotic Process Automation. Its origins lie with Nokia, and it is currently supported by the non-profit Robot Framework Foundation. "I realised I needed to share my knowledge better. But now, instead of explaining the same thing to each individual step by step, every week, like in school, I just put things from daily work as an assignment and then said 'go for it'. And now it runs all by itself." Julius Hüther, Network Solution Expert How did it come about and how is the bootcamp organised in the meantime? Starting with a small collection of keywords on the topic, within just one year a small didactic masterpiece of linked information and tasks has emerged, the solutions of which can immediately serve as a practical reference in the project. The secret: The formulation of sub-tasks and the documentation of solutions is done by the participants themselves, instead of being firmly prescribed by the mentors. Each participant is also a further developer of the training. "After the bootcamp, the participants are at a level from which they can have a say - no matter where they come from. You can just tell then who has done it and who hasn't." ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​Stanislaw Sauer, Student Assistant "They are realistic scenarios. You don't just get fed everything by hand, you have the space to learn for yourself. No one is punished if you think the wrong way." Sandro Voncenti, Student Assistant The strength of the format lies in its flexible orientation to the individual knowledge and working methods of the participants. Not only is the content designed to be as modular as possible. There is also no defined end to the programme: learners develop independently and a transition to project tasks at the client takes place seamlessly as soon as the necessary knowledge is available. Career starters and students are thus motivated and on an equal footing with their colleagues. At the same time, experienced employees do not feel they are in a training situation. Everyone comments on and expands on the tasks in their own way, and helps to shape how solutions are formulated and presented. Although there is a Test Automation Standup where questions about the Bootcamp could be discussed, the participants usually get help in spontaneous dialogue. This also shows the advantage of the method for the mentors: due to the less abstract, project-related tasks, support during the bootcamp is organically part of the daily work. Excerpt of a task from Part 2 of the Bootcamp: Robot Framework "Most of the time, the questions of those who are sitting on it have something to do with what we are busy with anyway. So that never bothers us." Julius Hüther, Network Solution Expert ​​​​​​ "I didn't know anything at the beginning. Then I just wrote down and self-documented every problem that I think somehow belongs to it." Stanislaw Sauer, Student Assistant Content of the Bootcamp At the moment, participants can join different modules depending on their interest and level of knowledge: ​​​​​​​ Networking Fundamentals: Basic understanding and handling of the required software environment such as GNS3, Wireshark, Robot Framework and a reasonable VS code environment. Advanced Networking: From the first self-programmed test to connectivity and routing tests, to documentation with LibDoc. Also troubleshooting and further lessons with Wireshark pyATS and Genie. Automated Testing: The actual automation with Robot Framework with a large number of best practices. In addition, there is the "Advanced Lab", an area for special test cases or particularly sophisticated solutions from practice, mostly presented by the more experienced colleagues. "You are given real problems, you simply learn more. This is the first time I've seen it like this in a company." ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​Stanislaw Sauer, Student Assistant "For me it's not over now, I'm still working on improving it e.g. for other topics like 5G or Infrastructure as Code." Sandro Voncenti, Student Assistant The development of interactive documentation has been a complete success so far and we are happy that the example is also setting a precedent in other projects and subject areas.

tl;dr This year, Hannover Messe will take place from 30 May to 2 June 2022. Theme: "Industrial Transformation" - Industry 4.0. siticom is an integral part of the solutions presented by Logicalis and Cisco at the Cisco booth: Hall 5, Booth D36. Logicalis GmbH will present innovative Private 5G technologies at the Hannover Messe (Cisco booth: hall 5, booth D36). The international IT solution and managed services provider will focus on the various fields of application of Private 5G - among others in Industry 4.0 scenarios, which aim at the use of Automated Guided Vehicles (AGV). Trade visitors can also find out more about the new Private 5G solution based on Cisco technologies in combination with the radio access solutions from JMA Wireless and Airspan. siticom is the specialist for the integration of various solutions and strengthens the Logicals portfolio as an expert for enterprise networks, fibre optic expansion and network transformation. Stefan Höltken sees a wide range of possible applications: "5G is a platform that makes innovations possible, whether in manufacturing, logistics or the energy and media sector. For example, flows of goods can be monitored without delays, autonomous vehicles can be integrated into logistical processes or drones can be used for maintenance purposes at hard-to-reach facilities." The advantages of the Cisco Private 5G solution at a glance Available as-a-service: reducing technical, financial and operational risks for businesses. Complementary with Wi-Fi: Integrates with enterprise systems, including existing and future versions of Wi-Fi. Transparent across the network and on all devices: Simplify operations with centralised management and policies. Pay-as-you-use model: Individual usage models help save costs and allow expansion with additional services. source: https://www.de.logicalis.com/presse/logicalis-auf-der-hannover-messe-2022/

In recent years, siticom has already taken on planning and construction coordination tasks for NetCologne GmbH in the context of FTTH (fiber to the home) network expansion for area coverage. Last year, planning and project management were added to the successful connection of numerous schools in Cologne. This year, the focus is increasingly shifting to new contracts in the real estate sector. How is NetCologne involved in connecting residential and commercial properties? With more than 28,000 kilometers of laid cable and a steady expansion, NetCologne is one of Germany's pioneers in fiber-optic expansion and fast Internet. NetCologne is regionally active and has around half a million residential and business customers. Demand for high-speed networks is rising steadily, with more and more real estate companies taking action to provide their tenants with the necessary broadband connection. For example, 5500 buildings are to be supplied with fiber optics for one of the largest residential construction companies in Cologne. What does siticom do in these projects? siticom is responsible for project coordination and tasks ranging from technical site inspections to monitoring implementation by construction and installation companies. After the site inspection, siticom independently carries out the connection planning and, if necessary, the further planning for the in-house area. In addition, the documents for the invitation to tender are prepared and site supervision and quality assurance are ensured until completion of the project. Learn more about siticom's activities in the area of infrastructure at https://www.siticom.online/infrastructure-modernization . We are looking forward to further exciting and successful projects together with our partner NetCologne in 2022! Source: https://netcologne-unternehmen.de/?_ga=2.94514268.1369483408.1645002740-172151258.1645002739&_gac=1.128799102.1645002742.Cj0KCQiA3rKQBhCNARIsACUEW_bakPG1f5_QlpupAJ_RDDJ2IxeEA8rSMMZoH17ZQwmrDn2PXc3e2Z0aAiVsEALw_wcB

Airspan Networks and siticom GmbH partner to deliver 5G wireless connectivity for a wide variety of Industry 4.0 vertical use cases in Germany such as manufacturing, automotive, healthcare and the agricultural sectors. Enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB), Massive Machine Type Communications (mMTC), and Ultra-Reliable Low Latency Communications (URLCC) will deliver a next-generation, future proof Industry 4.0 solution. More information and the detailed press release can be found here: https://www.siticom.online/airspan-and-siticom-partnership