Network Operating Systems: Questions and Answers

James Miles got tons of really interesting questions while watching the Network Operating System Models webinar by Dinesh Dutt, and the only reasonable thing to do when he sent them over was to schedule a Q&A session with Dinesh to discuss them.

We got together last week and planned to spend an hour or two discussing the questions, but (not exactly unexpectedly) we got only halfway through the list in the time we had, so we’re continuing next week.

This is how far we’ve got:

Network Automation Isn’t Easy

Contrary to what some evangelists would love you to believe, getting fluent in network automation is a bit harder than watching 3-minute videos and cobbling playbooks together with google-and-paste… but then nothing really worth doing is ever easy, or everyone else would be doing it already.

Here’s a typical comment from a Building Network Automation Solutions attendee:

I’m loving the class. I feel more confused than I ever have in my 23 year career… but I can already see the difference in my perspective shift in all aspects of my work.

Post-Quantum Cryptography: Hype and Reality

Post-quantum cryptography (algorithms resistant to quantum computer attacks) is quickly turning into another steaming pile of hype vigorously explored by various security vendors.

Christoph Jaggi made it his task to debunk at least some of the worst hype, collected information from people implementing real-life solutions in this domain, and wrote an excellent overview article explaining the potential threats, solutions, and current state-of-the art.

You (RFC 6919) OUGHT TO read his article before facing the first vendor presentation on the topic.

Feedback: VMware NSX Deep Dive

The mission of ipSpace.net is very simple: explain new networking technologies and products in a no-nonsense marketing-free and hopefully understandable way.

Sometimes we’re probably way off the mark, but every now and then we get it just right as evidenced by this feedback from one of our subscribers:

I was given short notice to present a board-level overview of VMWare NSX-T for an urgent virtualization platform change from Microsoft. Tech execs needed to understand NSX-T’s position in the market, in its product lifecycle, feature advantages, possible feature deficits, and an idea of the level of effort for implementation.

Understanding Linux Networking

Got this interesting question from one of my readers

Based on my experience, the documentation regarding Linux networking is either elementary man pages for user-space utilities or very complicated Linux kernel source code. Does getting deep into Linux networking mean reading source code?

It all depends on how deep you plan to go:

Deploying whitebox switches. If you’re just starting you SHOULD buy a supported solution that includes hardware and a variant of Linux running on it. Your problem transformed into “configuring control-plane protocols on Linux”. Congratulations, you’ll be perfectly fine studying Cumulus Networks documentation. Apart from the secret-sauce-ASIC-blob they’re using open-source software, so whatever you learn there should be transferrable to any other Linux networking environment.

However, even though the documentation is pretty good, expect a few gotchas. As Dinesh Dutt told me:

• Unlike a traditional NOS, Linux is not a monolithic entity. There’s the kernel and there are software packages than run on top. To make installation and management easier, different folks put together Continue reading

Duty Calls: Technologies that Didn’t: CLNS

Russ White published an interesting story explaining why we’re using IP and not CLNS to build today’s Internet.

Let’s start with a few minor details he missed that I feel obliged to point out (apologies to Russ for being too pedantic, but you know me…):

Worth Reading: Iron Chef – Certification Edition

In one of his recent blog posts Tom Hollingsworth described what I semi-consciously felt about the CCIE lab exam for at least 25 years: it’s full of contrived scenarios that look more like Iron Chef than real life.

I understand they had to make the lab harder and harder to stop cheating (because talking with candidates and flunking the incompetents is obviously not an option), and there’s only so much one can do with a limited set of technologies… but forcing networking engineers to find ever-more-devious ways to solve overly-complex problems is nothing else but fuel for rampant MacGyverism.

Anyway, I don’t think this mess will ever be fixed, so the only thing we can do is to enjoy the rant.

Video: Bridging, Routing, Switching

If you’re working solely with IP-based networks, you’re probably quick to assume that hop-by-hop destination-only forwarding is the only packet forwarding paradigm that makes sense. Not true, even today’s networks use a variety of forwarding mechanisms, most of them called some variant of routing or switching.

What exactly is the difference between the two, and what is bridging? I’m answering these questions (and a few others like what’s the difference between data-, control- and management planes) in the Bridging, Routing and Switching Terminology video.

When Machine Learning in Networking Might Make Sense

In March I explained why it’s unrealistic to expect to use machine learning to solve unknown problems in today’s snowflake networks… but are there other problems that could be solved?

Here’s an idea Paul Greenberg pointed me to: machine learning on public DNS data. Let’s see whether it might make sense:

Using Flow Tracking to Build Firewall Rulesets… and Halting Problem

Peter Welcher identified the biggest network security hurdle faced by most enterprise IT environments in his comment to Considerations for Host-based Firewalls (Part 1) blog post:

I have NEVER found a customer application team that can tell me all the servers they are using, their IP addresses, let alone the ports they use.

His proposed solution: use software like Tetration (or any other flow collecting tool) to figure out what’s really going on:

Accessing Docker Container Services over IPv6

Getting Docker to work with IPv6 is an interesting and under-documented (trying to stay diplomatic) adventure, but there’s a shortcut to the promised land: even if your Docker environment is pure IPv4 morass, you can still reach published container ports over IPv6 thanks to the userland proxy I described last week. The performance is obviously commensurate with traversing kernel-user boundary too many times.

New to this rabbit hole? Start here.

Finally, you don’t have to tell me (again) that Docker is dead and we should all use K8s. It’s as useful as telling me CloudStack is dead and we should all use OpenStack. Different challenges deserve different tools.

Vendor Marketectures in Real Life

Remember my rants about VMware and firewall vendors promoting crazy solutions that work best in PowerPoint and cause more headaches than anything else (excluding increased vendor margins and sales team bonuses, of course)?

Here’s another we-don’t-need-all-that-complexity real-life story coming from one of my long-term subscribers:

Interesting: PyEnv

If you’re like me, you’re probably sick-and-tired of Python versions, environments… Every time I update Python on my MacBook Pro with Homebrew, I lose all packages I installed for the previous version of Python (because I’m installing them system-wide and they’re stored in version-specific directory).

Jon Langemak found a potential solution to this problem: PyEnv. My first reaction was: Great, just what I need… but as he described how it really works, I realized that it’s always possible to add another layer of indirection. RFC1925 strikes again.

MUST Read: Blockchain, the amazing solution for almost nothing

One of the weekend reads collected by Russ White contained a pointer to a hilarious description of blockchain - a solution in search of a problem. Here are a few quotes to get you started (and I had a really hard time selecting just a few):

I’ve never seen so much bloated bombast fall so flat on closer inspection.

At its core, blockchain is a glorified spreadsheet.

The only thing is that there’s a huge gap between promise and reality. It seems that blockchain sounds best in a PowerPoint slide.

Someone should use that article as a framework and replace blockchain with OpenFlow or SDN ;)

Video: Cisco SD-WAN Routing Goodness

After covering the Cisco SD-WAN components and its architecture in the Cisco SD-WAN Foundations and Design Aspects webinar, David Penaloza focused on the routing capabilities it offers and its control plane characteristics, including types of routes and some scalability recommendations.

Are Business Needs Just Excuses for Vendor Shenanigans?

Every now and then I call someone’s baby ugly (or maybe it was their third cousin’s baby and they nonetheless feel offended). In such cases a common resort is to cite business or market needs to prove how ignorant and clueless I am. Here’s a sample LinkedIn comment talking about my ignorance about the need for smart NICs:

The rise of custom silicon by Presando [sic], Mellanox, Amazon, Intel and others confirms there is a real market need.

Now let’s get something straight: while there are good reasons to use tons of different things that might look inappropriate, irrelevant or plain stupid to an outsider, I don’t believe in real market need argument being used to justify anything without supporting technical facts (tell me why you need that stuff and prove to me that using it is the best way of solving a problem).

Why Don’t We Have Dynamic Firewall Policies

One of the readers of the Considerations for Host-Based Firewalls blog post wrote this interesting comment:

Perhaps a paradigm shift is due for firewalls in general? I’m thinking quickly here but wondering if we perhaps just had a protocol by which a host could request upstream firewall(s) to open access inbound on their behalf dynamically, the hosts themselves would then automatically inform the security device what ports they need/want opened upstream.

Well, we have at least two protocols that could fit the bill: Universal Plug and Play and Port Control Protocol (RFC 6887).

How Docker Uses iptables to Implement Published Ports

In early September I explained the difference between exposed and published Docker container ports.

Now let’s peek behind the curtain and explore how Docker uses iptables to publish container ports, and why it runs a userland proxy process for every published port.

For even more details, explore the Docker Networking Deep Dive webinar.

Is Cisco ACI Too Different?

A friend of mine involved in multiple Cisco ACI installations sent me this comment on their tenant connectivity model:

I’m a bit allergic to ACI. The abstraction is mis-aligned with familiar configurations, in particular contracts being independent of and over-riding routing, tenants, etc. You can really make a mess with that, and I’ve seen some! One needs to impose some structure, naming conventions…, and most people don’t seem to get that done.

As I noticed in the NSX-or-ACI webinar, it’s interesting how NSX decided to stay with the familiar VLAN/routing/filtering paradigm (more details), whereas the designers of Cisco ACI decided to go down a totally different path.

Duty Calls: CPU Is Not Designed for Packet Forwarding

Junhui Liu added this comment to my Where Do We Need Smart NICs? blog post:

CPU is not designed for the purpose of packet forwarding. One example is packet order retaining. It is impossible for a multicore CPU to retain the packet order as is received after parallel processing by multiple cores. Another example is scheduling. Yes CPU can do scheduling, but at a very high tax of CPU cycles.

Duty calls.