Ethan Banks

Author Archives: Ethan Banks

Tech Bytes: NVIDIA BlueField And Project Monterey (Sponsored)

On today’s Tech Bytes podcast, we talk Data Processing Units (DPUs) with sponsor NVIDIA. The context is VMware’s Project Monterey. Wes Kennedy, TME for BlueField at NVIDIA, is here to discuss how NVIDIA is partnering with VMware to enable offloads of applications such as NSX and VSAN.

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Heavy Networking 642: 10Mbps Single Pair Ethernet

Single pair Ethernet. That’s right. Ethernet over a single twisted pair, rather than the four you’re used to. Or two if you’ve got a little gray in your beard. Now, single pair Ethernet isn’t fast in the way we network engineers would normally think of fast. SPE runs at 10 megabits per second. But in the use cases SPE was designed for, 10Mbps is very fast indeed. To tell us all about single pair Ethernet is Peter Jones. Although Peter wears many hats in the networking industry, today he comes to the microphone as the chairperson of the Ethernet Alliance.

The post Heavy Networking 642: 10Mbps Single Pair Ethernet appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Heavy Networking 642: 10Mbps Single Pair Ethernet

Single pair Ethernet. That’s right. Ethernet over a single twisted pair, rather than the four you’re used to. Or two if you’ve got a little gray in your beard. Now, single pair Ethernet isn’t fast in the way we network engineers would normally think of fast. SPE runs at 10 megabits per second. But in the use cases SPE was designed for, 10Mbps is very fast indeed. To tell us all about single pair Ethernet is Peter Jones. Although Peter wears many hats in the networking industry, today he comes to the microphone as the chairperson of the Ethernet Alliance.

Heavy Networking 641: Network Design For NVMe Over Fabric

Today on Heavy Networking, we discuss NVMe over fabric, where your Ethernet and IP network is the fabric. Many NVMe over fabric discussions focus on what’s happening inside the storage packets themselves. This conversation focuses on the network. What does the topology need to be? What are the latency and loss characteristics of an NVMe transport fabric? What QoS tools should you be considering, how do they work, and when should you use them? Our guest for this vendor-neutral conversation is J Metz.

The post Heavy Networking 641: Network Design For NVMe Over Fabric appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Heavy Networking 641: Network Design For NVMe Over Fabric

Today on Heavy Networking, we discuss NVMe over fabric, where your Ethernet and IP network is the fabric. Many NVMe over fabric discussions focus on what’s happening inside the storage packets themselves. This conversation focuses on the network. What does the topology need to be? What are the latency and loss characteristics of an NVMe transport fabric? What QoS tools should you be considering, how do they work, and when should you use them? Our guest for this vendor-neutral conversation is J Metz.

I, The Braggart – A Network Fable

My boss stepped into our shared cubicle space and rested his arm on top of the fabric wall. He peered down at me. “Hey.” He always started with a quiet “hey” when he was about to ask me to do something new. I glanced at my whiteboard filled with projects and statuses, and steeled myself for the fresh request.

“Hey. I just got out of a meeting with Lewis.” I groaned inwardly. Lewis was my boss’s boss, and while Lewis was a fantastic human being, meetings with him were usually in the context of projects. Big ones. I put on a fake smile to mask creeping despair. “Oh? How did that go?”

My boss ripped off the band-aid. “Lewis wants a monthly summary from everyone of what they’ve been doing. So, on the last Friday of the month, make sure you have all your project statuses updated, including key milestones. Your whiteboard is great for you and me since we share this space, but now you’re going to need to log your statuses into the project database.” He smirked. “Like a big boy.”

I died a little inside. One of the reasons I’d left consulting Continue reading

Heavy Networking 640: Architecture Vs. Engineering Roles

What’s been your experience with architecture vs. engineering roles? Are those distinct functions or combined in your organization? How do the roles interact? Does the architecture team hand down holy designs from their ivory tower the engineering team is expected to implement them? Is the architecture and engineering function more combined, where experienced engineers are expected to create an architecture and help put it in place? Ethan Banks and guest Pat Allen share their experiences with architecture and engineering roles from organizations they've worked in.

The post Heavy Networking 640: Architecture Vs. Engineering Roles appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Heavy Networking 640: Architecture Vs. Engineering Roles

What’s been your experience with architecture vs. engineering roles? Are those distinct functions or combined in your organization? How do the roles interact? Does the architecture team hand down holy designs from their ivory tower the engineering team is expected to implement them? Is the architecture and engineering function more combined, where experienced engineers are expected to create an architecture and help put it in place? Ethan Banks and guest Pat Allen share their experiences with architecture and engineering roles from organizations they've worked in.

Improving DNS Privacy With QNAME Minimization (RFC7816)

This post originally appeared on the Packet Pushers’ Ignition site on October 1, 2019.   When a host doesn’t know the IP address for a hostname, what does it do? It asks its configured DNS server to resolve the hostname. (Usually. There are apps, notably browsers, that might do their own thing. But let’s go […]

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Heavy Networking 638: Don’t Block DNS Over TCP

DNS is our subject on today's Heavy Networking. More specifically, DNS transport over TCP. We talk with John Kristoff, one of the forces behind RFC9210, which covers the operational requirements for DNS transport over TCP. This is not an esoteric document covering a tiny, nuanced DNS use case. Instead this doc will likely affect most of you listening, whether you’re a network operator or a name server operator. We talk with John about the implications of this RFC.

The post Heavy Networking 638: Don’t Block DNS Over TCP appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Heavy Networking 638: Don’t Block DNS Over TCP

DNS is our subject on today's Heavy Networking. More specifically, DNS transport over TCP. We talk with John Kristoff, one of the forces behind RFC9210, which covers the operational requirements for DNS transport over TCP. This is not an esoteric document covering a tiny, nuanced DNS use case. Instead this doc will likely affect most of you listening, whether you’re a network operator or a name server operator. We talk with John about the implications of this RFC.

Setting Up Public-Private Keys For SSH Authentication

This post originally appeared on the Packet Pushers’ Ignition site on February 18, 2020.   The more pedantic in the tech community argue about the merits of public-private key authentication vs. simple password authentication when logging into an SSH host. I have no strong opinion regarding your security posture when using one vs. the other. […]

The post Setting Up Public-Private Keys For SSH Authentication appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Marketing Docs Are Not Written For Engineers

When reading marketing literature as an engineer, you must always be careful to parse the words correctly. For example, I was reviewing a vendor’s pitch deck on a new hardware switch. The switch was described as having the following attributes.

  • Cloud-native
  • AI-driven
  • Secure
  • Next-generation

From an engineering perspective, nothing of value has been described to you in that list.

I have no idea what they are trying to get at with cloud-native. I can think of no greater antithesis to “cloud-native” than a chunk of hardware you bolt into a rack to do network things. Someone on Twitter suggested that because the switch supports ZTP, it’s cloud-native…which, if so, is comedy gold.

AI-driven means…what, exactly? That there is some AI on the switch itself doing data analysis and changing the network configuration in response to whatever the algorithm thinks is best? It could mean that, although then we’d have to discuss what’s meant by AI, whether or not the “AI” is happening off- or on-box, and why that’s different from software-defined.

Secure is a word you sprinkle over every technology product. Because of course it’s secure. But again, what does secure mean in this context? That the switch was built Continue reading

Understanding OSPF Router ID (RID) Assignment

This post originally appeared on the Packet Pushers’ Ignition site on March 24, 2020. In both OSPFv2 (IPv4) and OSPFv3 (IPv6), the router ID (RID) is a 32-bit number assigned to the router. The RID must be unique within the OSPF network, as a RID provides a point of origin for link state advertisements (LSAs). […]

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Put In The Work

Would you like to stand out from your peers? Would you like to impress the people you work for, or perhaps the people you’d like to work for? Put in the work. Putting in the work to achieve a goal is a form of self-sacrifice. To get the thing you want, you need to give up something else.

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Join The Packet Pushers For A Live Stream With Gluware June 28, 2022

We're hosting the "Real World Enterprise Automation" live stream with sponsor Gluware on June 28, 2022. Gluware is a network automation vendor that's especially good at taking your existing, multi-vendor network and adding automation to it. We'd like it if you'd register to attend this hour-or-so event in real-time via https://packetpushers.net/live. Thanks!

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How To Reference Nested Python Lists & Dictionaries

This post originally appeared in the Packet Pushers’ Ignition site on March 10, 2020. When getting data back from API queries in Python, the data is often delivered in JSON format. Python libraries such as requests will convert that JSON data structure into a Python-native data structure you can work with. That Python data structure […]

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