Connecting & Protecting Communities Through Internet with Cox

Startups get the party Startups get the party started. Startups get the party Startups get the party started. You want tech and tacos Tacos in tech you know we got tacos and tech is on smash Boulder green guacamole keep accountants counting beans Contador Quentan frijoles found us trying to raise some queso la vida San Diego school of rappy rapping fire tortillas round jalapenos in these modern times a crappy my coding yoga posse fold the body origami we be surfing coronado eating tacos el gordo the tacos stand in puesto lucha libre and sombrero gotta shout out to cost angels by the ocean watch the sunset La Jolla shores Entrepreneurs trying to get funded When San Diego Startup Week is popping in the summer Oceanside to Tijuana esti be full of hustlers from couch surfing to penthouses right on the beach Tech leaders believe stars are within reach we interview and founders who be shooting for the Moon SDTechOS with your host Neil Bloom. Startups get the party Startups get the.

Welcome to the Tacos and Tech podcast where we discover cutting edge San Diego technologies and the builders making it happen. I'm your host Neil Bloom, San Diego's Tech ambassador and together we're going to put a face to the name of today's tech leaders with our own blend of local lifestyle. I want to take a moment to thank our friends at Cox Business who have enabled us to tell these amazing stories of local leaders, technologists, founders and funders. Cox is actually a 121-year-old family run business that thinks in terms of decades in building community a lot like we do in starting a business. For years the local Cox business team has helped us grow through partnering at San Diego Startup Week, South Dakota. Quick pitch and in celebrating our local technical leaders at the Top Tech Awards through bringing a great enterprise customer and partner. Thanks again to Cox Business and welcome back to the podcast. I'm your host Neal Bloom and I'm very excited to be talking about designing, scaling and protecting the connections to the Internet today with two esteemed guests of mine. Now more than ever, our entire lives are extremely dependent on being connected through the Internet. We tend to take it for granted this infrastructure beneath our streets and wirelessly through our air. And today we're going to nerd out a bit about how technology keeps tens of millions of people, businesses, services connected through the Internet. With us today got Brent Bowers, Vice President of technology engineering and operations from Cox Communications and Daniel Martinez Director of Enterprise Sales at Cox Business. Guys, thanks so much for being on the show.

Thanks for having us, Neil.

Thank you.

Do you guys both want to jump into real quick of your roles within Cox Communications and Business?

Sure, I'll go first. So again, my name is Brent Bowers. So in a nutshell, Neil, my team's responsibilities and mine are really around the engineering operations for all of our network data centers, what we'd also call technical facilities. So this involves everything from the maintenance of the building, air conditioning, fire suppression systems, the DC 48 volt power plant and the backup generator systems, all the way to the installation and operations of all of the networking and signal origination equipment that provides all of our voice, video and high speed data services. The other half of my team's responsibilities is around the installation and management of our networks for our fiber based Cox Business Services. And that includes all of the engineering staff that design and manage the core Cox Business network and also the field technicians that go out and install and maintain all the equipment at the customer's premise. So that's it in a quick nutshell.

Okay, we're going to dive, we're going to break that down a little bit obviously further on this podcast. Daniel, you want to describe your background?

Yes, I think Brent has a bigger nutshell, but I'm the director of Enterprise Sales here in San Diego county for Cox Business. So we're the business arm, commercial services side of Cox Communications. And within my purview are some verticals like hospitality, healthcare, education and government. So we're kind of, my team is responsible for working with some of the larger organizations across town both in the public and private space.

Got it. Okay, great. Well, some background about Cox that I don't know if all of our listeners know is that, you know, Cox is 121 year old family owned business that services, you know, communities all across the nation, both from cable, Internet, cloud services. How many people? Totally. I mean, what's the total number of people that are being serviced by Cox Services?

Neil? We have over 6 million total residential and business customers nationwide. You think about how many systems that we have. We operate in 18 different states from coast to coast. So I know a lot of people that are probably listening in here in San Diego, you always think about Cox Cable and their communications here locally, but we really are all over the country. Wow.

Incredible. It's a lot of people to work on. A lot of our listeners are startup listeners who are thinking about how do they break in and get those early adopters. And this is the enterprise Client right here. This is the company that is serving the masses. So I think to hear about the infrastructure and the technology that you've built is super fascinating. With that, Brent, maybe you want to give us a little breakdown of a simplified way of how does the Internet get to people's houses and business?

Sure. I can kind of break it down into two main steps. One of the most common applications that people use for the Internet, of course, is web browsing. So I'll talk at first a little bit of what happens with the request. Let's say somebody wants to go to freshbrewtech.com the first step will be that your computer is going to ask our DNS servers, the domain name system servers, what the IP address is for that website. Because at the end of the day, all of the Internet, the computers and all the routers and everything in between don't work on words, they work on numbers. So getting that IP address, getting that conversion from freshbrewedtech.com into an IP address is really critical. Once we have the IP address, then what's going to happen is your web browser will go and ask the web server based on that IP that it received for that page back, that gets routed essentially across all of the local access network, into our metropolitan backbone, and then to our national backbone and out to appear in site. So if we dig down a layer deeper, kind of talk about the life of the packet, if you want to get into that, I can talk about kind of how that flows out of the customer's home or office and then out to the Internet. You want to go that deep?

Let's dive.

All right, cool. So the first thing that happens, as I said, that packet exchange goes on. So that packet really comes from your computer, goes through your wifi or your wired connection to get to your router, and then it goes to the cable modem. And so the cable modem is going to take that and then remodulate it and put it out on our HFC plant or hybrid fiber coax plant. And then from that cable modem, it gets sent electrically across the coax wire in the neighborhood and then goes to what's known as an HFC node or an optoelectronic node. And that node is essentially doing the first conversion from an electrical signal into an optical signal. And then at that point, it rides the fiber network back to our telecommunications center or technical facility. And then it lands on a piece of equipment called a cmts. It's a cable modem termination system. And then from there it gets kind of remodulated out of that RF signal and it gets put back into an Ethernet signal. And then from there it has a couple of uplinks for redundancy. So there will be a theme for us in our network architecture that we have pretty much redundant everything from transport paths to uplinks and even redundant routers. So from that cmts, it has a choice of going up to a pair of routers that are there for, as I said, for redundancy. And then a routing decision gets made based on what is the next best hop within our network to get it out to its Internet destination. So at that point it traverses our metropolitan backbone, which goes from the router onto a DWDM transport network. DWDM is dense wave division multiplexing, and that's a technology that gives us the ability to multiplex multiple devices across a single pair of fiber. From there it hits our national backbone on a set of routers, and then again that next routing decision gets made. So in the Internet and all routed networks, you're always looking at what is the next best forward path, hoping to get to your destination. So decisions are just getting made every step along the way. And so once it hits our national backbone, a final decision gets made. Which of our peering sites or connection providers does it need to go to to get to its final destination? And then once it's there and gets to that final web server, then the entire reverse path happens back to send back the data that you asked for initially. So that's the cable modem answer on the Cox business. On our more complex fiber based service, it's a similar function, but it's a separate network. So in that most of the times we have a piece of equipment that is in the MPO or the customer's server room and their network, their firewall would hand off the packet to our commercial transport network. And then this is an all optical network, so there's generally not a lot of electrical to optical conversion happening. And once that happens, it hits our node and then either gets sent to a local aggregation hub or goes across a ring to go back to that technical facility. And then from there it hits a different set of routers, again, fully redundant. And then the packet flow looks roughly the same conceptually. You go up across the metropolitan backbone that's dedicated for Cox business, and then you go out to our national backbone, which is where we do converge all of our residential and commercial services. And then again, that routing decision gets made to get out to the correct destination for the customer's request.

Wow, quite a path just to go to a simple website, right? I mean obviously you're continuously building this network, right? And continuously, I'm guessing, improving it as technology comes around. Over the years, obviously there's been huge upgrades in terms of availability of technology. Some of the terms we hear like undersea cables, fiber optics, maybe now fiber all the way getting into someone's house. What are some of these other technologies that are being employed to keep these networks online?

Yeah, fiber is really the core of our network. The cable companies were really some of the first to push fiber out into the neighborhood. So that's something that we've been utilizing since the early 90s. As I mentioned before, we have a very large high speed fiber backbone and really we have tens of thousands of miles of fiber across both our local footprint and that national backbone. And so there's a lot of technologies involved in that. As I mentioned before, DWDM Dense Wave Division multiplexing is a really core technology that sits at the, at the foundation of our national and our metropolitan backbone networks. As we go one layer up the OSI model routers are also a huge, huge component of that backbone. So a couple years ago kind of 10 gig was everything. We're well into 100 gigabit ethernet now for those core links and we are looking forward to 400 gigabit and even terabit connections that will be coming out probably in the next few years.

I know something we've talked about and seeing more and more of is the Ubiquiti systems which are semi new, semi been around but continue to be upgraded for kind of personal and business use. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Yeah. So I have a little bit of familiarity with Ubiquiti. It's a enterprise kind of commercial grade WI fi and routing system. This isn't one that we currently deploy, but I've got some personal experience with it. It's based on a SDN or software defined networking capability where it really simplifies the provisioning and orchestration of services across a wide set of networking devices. This is something that I've dabbled with personally in my house for a few years and it's something that Cox business is now deploying with our rapid scale technology acquisition. So SDN is a really neat technology. It provides a lot of capability and flexibility for our customers and it's something that I think will be very beneficial to allow a lot of disparate network connections to be able to come together in a simplified manner and provide a lot of flexibility to our customers. At the end that will allow them to get very minute control over the way their network and applications are functioning.

So we've got this amazingly strong, powerful network with multiple redundancies, super fast speeds. But it needs protection, right? It needs to make sure that it doesn't get taken down, either attacked or whatever else could happen. What all goes into protecting the cybersecurity and other aspects of a network like this?

That's a big question. So I mean, we could easily spend a few hours getting into all of the minute details on that topic. At a high level, I'd say there are really three main facets that we look at for securing our networks and a lot of these apply for our customers as well. So the three main facets really are around, I'd say physical security, logical security, and people. So physical security of the infrastructure, that's kind of the most simple one for folks to get ahold of. You think concrete and steel walls, locks, biometric scanners, RFID badges, all parts of multi factor authentication, which is really a core tenet around all security going on to logical security. That's a huge topic in and of itself. As with everything, we employ really multiple layers of defense in securing our network. It starts with a really robust design that first isolates out sections of the network to minimize exposure to the public Internet and then deploying layers of firewalls and intrusion detection and prevention systems. And then on top of that, we put access controls on all the elements across the network using multiple layers of encryption and multi factor authentication for systems management. So we also utilize key partnerships to protect our customers and our network from things like volumetric or process based DDoS attacks. We've got a couple layers of capability. The kind of public facing number is that we have about, we have more than 12 terabits of scrubbing capacity to protect our networking customers against things like a volumetric DDoS attack. Process based attacks are something sometimes called the low and slow attack. That is another big thing to be concerned about because this is one that this is a type of attack that instead of just throwing huge amounts of bandwidth at a resource, it's about exploiting potential flaws or limitations in resource stacks on end systems, whether it's a router, server, something of that nature. And so we've built many layers of systems and like I said, key partnerships that allow us to deal with both on the kind of last side, the people side. This is a really important one and it's one that cannot be overlooked. And I think it's gained a lot more attention in the news over the past several years. But for your people, it's really about comprehensive training and having policies and automated systems that come together and really help defend those attack vectors, like, you know, phishing and social engineering or even a physical breach of your premises. So these are all things that have to be updated across the board and something that you can never be complacent in because there's an arms race there. The attackers are always looking for different ways to get in the networks and exploit whatever they're looking for. And I'd say at a high level for folks that really aren't too familiar with cybersecurity. The days of the kit hacker in his room that's just messing around for fun and kind of the thrill of what they can get into, that's kind of gone. Those folks are still out there. But the two big attack vectors that we see today are around the state sponsored attacks. So countries like China and Russia and Iran and North Korea all have dedicated portions of their government that are focused on attacking systems and people out across the world that are of political interest. The other one that you see is more around the organized crime groups that are looking for a source of income. And so there's a lot of, probably a lot more awareness around things like ransomware where these organized crime collective groups are looking to take over large sections of computer systems, especially for high profile businesses that potentially have a lot to lose and have deep pockets and they're going to attack them looking for, they're hoping for a payoff in that ransom.

Yeah. Hey Brian, I'll just add to that. I know that oftentimes we're looking at the hackers, but the biggest vulnerability is generally not the network, it's your actual users. Your users often are the biggest threat you have on your business. So I think when you're looking at, you have the full gamut for the full range of ways you can help protect your network from the most simple things. It's password diligence on your passwords, making sure that we're using best practices for passwords for businesses of all types. We're changing them and that comes with training. Obviously don't click on that email from, from Nigeria, the Nigerian prince. That's never a good idea. Those are things that we've, we've all encountered over the years. But you know, I think that as you mentioned earlier, making sure that we're training our people and we have, you know, ongoing repetition of that training every year to make sure that people are reminded, our users are reminded that you know, got to be careful with phishing, phishing exercises that we have from those, those third party hackers. And then the other part I think you mentioned also, Brent, is that we've always think of hackers as the people that are actually the ones that are doing all the hacking. It's really all the kitty scrollers, the people that are just repeating the same phishing exercises that are often the ones that are propagating these threats across the industry. The other thing I think that we encounter often is just making sure that the businesses have a commitment to updating their. They're patching on their other software and their servers and such. Especially with IoT, it becomes more of a part of everyday life. Everything from our smartwatches, our printers, they're all connected to network now. So we really need to figure out those zero D exploits, make sure that we're patching up and we're fixing them as we go along.

Daniel, kind of a follow up to that. Since you're kind of on the front lines working with businesses, are they often asking those questions or are they kind of a lot of times not necessarily even realizing all the different devices they have connected. And so you're kind of coming in and advising, consulting, kind of showing them, here's the breadth of everything you need to do.

Yeah, it's much like, as Brent mentioned, all the different components that go into a network in the back office. The options out there for security and support for managed services can be dizzying for many. I think that's partially why we think it's important to make sure that our customers and businesses across the country are focused on using a managed service provider to help them, to guide them through all these different technologies and ways that their networks can get compromised. The other side is simply the shift over to cloud. The cloud is. It could be nebulous and people just say there's so many different things out there. That was not intended to be a pun, but I realized it was as soon as I said it. But there's so many things from cloud security that's protecting, like virtual firewalls that are out in the cloud that will help protect your networks, but the other side is on your desktop. There's simple things and technologies out there, like virtual desktops, where an MSP can now manage your actual desktop environment to help ensure that things are constantly getting patched in the back office and you're limiting the exploits that are available from hackers that are compromising the individual users. Also, things that can be done is just email security Their email security. There's a lot of different technology out there that can help scrub emails from threats before they're actually ever opened up by your, by your users. So those are all things that are, I think they're good best practice for us in general.

Really great tips, that's for sure. We'll try to outline them in the show notes too. We just can't stress enough how important it is that people are proactive is really kind of what I'm hearing. You know, you can't just rely on expecting the Internet to police itself. You gotta, you gotta police your own network. And I really appreciate those tips, especially in San Diego. You know, we, we enjoy the freedom of living in a fantastic space and the flexibility of that lifestyle too. And with that lifestyle comes great food. And so I have to know the people want to know what are your favorite taco spots? Daniel, you first.

Oh God. It's like asking me who my favorite child is there really. I would say that, you know, it's. The taco is, is a, it's such an amazing food that you can, you can have it for breakfast, lunch or dinner or even midnight snack depending on what you're doing. But I'll say if I pick an overall good taco spot, I'd say Lola 55 downtown. They, they have lots of vegetarian tacos as well as, as meat and seafood based ones. And they're owned by a, the owner actually is from TJ and he just makes a pretty fantastic taco. So I enjoy that one. They got great cocktails as well.

What's, what's the go to order there?

Oh, my favorite I would say is the cauliflower taco. It's pretty darn good.

We will look for that for sure. Brent, how about you?

I struggle with that one like Daniel as well. I think you'd be hard pressed to go wrong with Las Cuatros Milpas. And then we have another one, a restaurant near our office that I really enjoy to chiquitas over on Home Avenue.

Okay, those are good ones. Do you have a favorite go to or favorite meat or fish?

I think you're hard pressed to go wrong with a good old fashioned shredded beef taco.

Yeah, that is true.

Neil, what's your favorite taco? Where do you like to go?

Put me on the spot. I mean I've got every single one. Feels like my baby depends on my mood. You know, if I, if I need, you know, something late at night, I actually may go for a California burrito. But if it is, you know, maybe happy hour looking for a little higher end one Puesto is a great spot. I love a good puesto taco.

Yeah, puesta is great.

Yeah. And then the breakfast tacos, you mentioned them too. Oh, I love a good breakfast taco with some tater tots in them or you know, and that you can't go wrong from taco stand or even like an Alberto tacos. Just if you're any corner around town, you'll find one of those, right? Alighos Alberto's. Yeah.

So that's the California, the California burrito version of the taco. It sounds, you know, it's funny about the California burritos. I think you can only find them in San Diego county. So we're lucky here.

It's interesting, Austin tries to, tries to take us down around taco conversations but they really, really are just the breakfast taco is what they seem to be known for. But you know what? We can all, we can appreciate tacos everywhere. That's the beautiful thing. We can come together around that.

That's right.

Well gents, I really appreciate you peeling the layer back around this infrastructure that's really keeping us going even more so right now. So we'll let you get back to work, let you keep protecting and connecting and I love that rhyme. And thanks so much again for being on the podcast.

Thanks for having us, Neil.

Thanks for having us.

Appreciate it.

Thanks for joining us on the tacos and tech podcast with Neil Bloom. Thanks again to Cox Business for helping make this possible by expanding the reach of the San Diego tech ecosystem. Big shout out to School of Rap for our rad intro music. And thanks as well to Nest Podcast Network where we are recording live inside their studio at Nest Co working in Bankers Hill. You can find Neil Bloom on Twitter Eelbloom as well as fresh brewed tech and tacos and Tech Pod on Twitter too.

Startups get the party. Startups get the party started. Startups get the party. Startups get the party started. You want checking tacos, tacos in tacos deck, you know we got it.