Ethan Banks
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Ethan Banks
7-Nov-2014: Press Releases From Meru, Gigamon, Big Switch + Dell
I receive a steady stream of press releases from networking vendors. I don’t have time to cover them all (or even most of them) individually, because there’s only so many hours in the week. Even so, I find many of the releases to contain genuinely interesting news. I thought I’d try echoing the […]The Importance of Knowing Baselines
When observing network utilization (whether that’s bandwidth or some other element you monitor), you have to know your baseline. The big idea is to understand what’s normal for your network, as every network is a little different. Only when you know your network’s baseline does it become possible to detect anomalies. For example, when […]Show 210 – SPB Implementation Fundamentals
Dominik and Ricki Cook join Packet Pushers Greg Ferro and Ethan Banks in a hands-on exploration of Shortest Path Bridging, IEEE 802.1aq. Most of us have had our hands on Avaya gear that does SPB — Ethan in the lab, and Dominik + Ricki in production environments. We go through the basic goals, setup, and commands […]
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The post Show 210 – SPB Implementation Fundamentals appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Ethan Banks.
Using Scapple To Help Manage Complex Network Changes
I’ve blogged about Scapple in the past, describing how I’ve been using Scapple to do basic network diagrams. If you are willing to give up some of the fancy features you get with an advanced diagramming tool like Visio or Omnigraffle, Scapple can take you reasonably far. In preparation for a recent change […]Announcement: The Hot Aisle Newsletter
I’ve launched a newsletter called The Hot Aisle. Why might you care? The Hot Aisle is a personal look at my real life IT engineering projects, thoughts about the networking industry I won’t publish anywhere else, my growingly contrarian views on social media, good stuff I’ve read, and comments from fellow Hot Aisle readers. The content is […]Cisco ACI Fabric Forwarding In A Nutshell
As I study software defined networking architectures, I’ve observed that none of them are exactly alike. There are common approaches, but once diving into the details of what’s being done and how, even the common approaches seem to have as many differences as similarities. One of the most interesting elements of SDN architectures […]Show 208 – So, You Want To Work For A Vendor?
Lauren Malhoit, Paul Stewart, and Ed Henry join Packet Pushers hosts Greg Ferro and Ethan Banks for a discussion about what it’s like to work for a networking vendor. Lauren and Paul recently started working at Cisco in two very different roles, while Ed went the startup route, landing at Plexxi. Why did they do it? What […]
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The post Show 208 – So, You Want To Work For A Vendor? appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Ethan Banks.
Show 207 – Cisco Nexus Unified Fabric – Sponsored
What’s new with Cisco Nexus Unified Fabric (formerly Dynamic Fabric Automation), you ask? Well, an integrated end-to-end solution that builds on four fundamental pillars is what’s new. The pillars are… Fabric management. Workload automation. Optimized networking. Virtual fabrics. These features are applicable across the Nexus product line from the Nexus 7K down to the Nexus 1K […]
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The post Show 207 – Cisco Nexus Unified Fabric – Sponsored appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Ethan Banks.
Show 206 – Brocade’s OpenDaylight-Based Vyatta Controller – Sponsored
If you watch the software defined networking space, you might have noticed that Brocade has been quietly hiring a sharp group of actual (not self-proclaimed) thought leaders and developers. The question has been, “To what end? What’s Brocade going to do with all of these capable folks?” Today, we can answer that question. Brocade has built an […]
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The post Show 206 – Brocade’s OpenDaylight-Based Vyatta Controller – Sponsored appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Ethan Banks.
ThousandEyes Network Monitoring Use Cases
ThousandEyes is a network monitoring company who’s shining a light on the darkened portion of the network path you don’t own. Rather than the Internet appearing to an enterprise as a generic cloud where magic happens, ThousandEyes looks inside the cloud, revealing details about how your enterprise gets to remote services. For example, […]How We Filter Information About IT Products
The amount of information to be found out about tech products is astonishing. Anything you’d like to know about virtually any product is a Google search away. The hits you’ll get back are loaded with information, some useful and some…less useful. I am awash in data to ingest each and every day. I […]Show 205 – Open Source Network Monitoring with OMDistro.org
Network monitoring is one of our most requested topics on Packet Pushers, and this week we take on open source monitoring solutions. Why open source? Because commercial NMS solutions are all over the place in functionality and price. So, if it’s possible to put a solid NMS in place based on open source, then it’s […]
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The post Show 205 – Open Source Network Monitoring with OMDistro.org appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Ethan Banks.
Show 204 – Reducing Your Attack Surface with Avaya Stealth Networks – Sponsored
“The problem with ‘covering your tracks’ in network security is that your ‘covering’ becomes more conspicuous than your ‘tracks’,” says Ed Koehler, Distinguished Engineer for Avaya’s Networking Division. Ed joins Greg Ferro and Ethan Banks for a ninja nerd-fest outlining a set of technologies that not only offer some innovative ways to set up your […]
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The post Show 204 – Reducing Your Attack Surface with Avaya Stealth Networks – Sponsored appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Ethan Banks.
Show 203 – SDN Policy + Congress with Martin Casado & Tim Hinrichs
This week, the Packet Pushers chat with Martin Casado & Tim Hinrichs about policy. What's policy, you ask? In the context of the software defined data center, policy is the big idea that what an IT system needs to do can be expressed in an abstract policy language. The need for abstraction exists because human beings aren't easily able to tell machines explicitly what they need to do build a system that conforms to a given policy.
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The post Show 203 – SDN Policy + Congress with Martin Casado & Tim Hinrichs appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Ethan Banks.
What Does SolarWinds Know About Your Applications?
In a Tech Field Day Extra briefing held at VMworld 2014, SolarWinds chatted with the delegation about the future of their product set. If you’re thinking of SolarWinds as that little company that does red light / green light and makes pretty meters that show network bandwidth utilization, you’ve lost track of what […]What is Prescriptive Topology Manager (PTM) & DOT?
While browsing through the blog post about the Cumulus Linux 2.2 release as well as the release notes, I noticed several references to Prescriptive Topology Manager (PTM). Having not heard of this feature before, I dug in to discover what PTM is all about. First of all, here’s a PTM summarizing quote from […]Show 202 – Avaya & The Critical Importance of the SDN Underlay – Sponsored
“The most interesting part of building our house was choosing the brick and trim,” explains Randy Cross, Director of Product Line Management at Avaya, “but in Texas with clay soils, the most IMPORTANT element was the foundation.” This podcast explains that much of the SDN hype today centers on the outer elements of SDN – […]
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The post Show 202 – Avaya & The Critical Importance of the SDN Underlay – Sponsored appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Ethan Banks.