Ivan Pepelnjak
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Ivan Pepelnjak
This Is How You Handle Customer Support Issues
My first ride with Uber was a love at first sight – the amount of friction they managed to remove from using-a-taxi process is unbelievable.
However, every love story eventually faces real-life issues, and what really matters is how you handle them at that point.
Read more ...Don’t Optimize the Last 5%
Robin Harris described an interesting problem in his latest blog post: while you can reduce the storage access time from milliseconds to microseconds, the whole software stack riding on top still takes over 100 milliseconds to respond. Sometimes we’re optimizing the wrong part of the stack.
Any resemblance to SDN in enterprises or the magical cost-reduction properties of multi-vendor data center fabrics is obviously purely coincidental.
Must Read: James Mickens on Security
A link on Bruce Schneier’s blog pointed me to the latest article by the truly awesome James Mickens, this time making great fun of security researchers. Exactly what you need with your coffee on a Saturday morning. Enjoy!
Musing on Nerd Knobs
Henk left a wonderful comment on my SDN will not solve real-life enterprise problems blog post. He started with a bit of sarcasm:
SDN will give more control and flexibility over the network to the customer/user/network-admin. They will be able to program their equipment themselves, they will be able to tweak routing algorithms in the central controller. They get APIs to hook into the heart of the intelligence. They get more config-knobs. It's gonna be awesome.
However, he thinks (and I agree) that this vision doesn’t make sense:
Read more ...SDN: ONF Is Moving to “Logically Centralized Control Plane”
Open Networking Foundation has this nice and crisp definition of SDN:
[SDN is] The physical separation of the network control plane from the forwarding plane, and where a control plane controls several devices.
Using this definition it was easy to figure out whether certain architecture complies with ONF definition of SDN. It was also easy to point out why it was ridiculous.
Read more ...SSL Termination on Virtual Appliances: Another Myth Busted
In the Can Virtual Routers Compete with Physical Hardware blog post I mentioned that SSL termination remains one of the few bastions of hardware acceleration.
Based on the comment made by RPM, it looks like I was wrong.
Here’s his reasoning:
Read more ...How Long Will that Webinar take?
One of my readers wondered how long my NFV webinar is supposed to take (and I forgot to add that information to my web site), so he sent me this question: “How long is this webinar? An hour? Two hours? If it says "webinar" does that imply a 60 minute duration, so I shouldn't ask?”
Short answer: live webinar sessions usually take between 90 minutes and 2 hours depending on the breadth of the topic, however…
Layer-3-Only Data Center Networks with Cumulus Linux on Software Gone Wild
With the advent of layer-3 leaf-and-spine data center fabrics, it became (almost) possible to build pure layer-3-only data center networks… if only the networking vendors would do the very last step and make every server-to-ToR interface a layer-3 interface. Cumulus decided to do just that.
Read more ...How Did You Learn So Much About Networking?
One of my readers sent me a heartfelt email that teleported me 35 years down the memory lane. He wrote:
I only recently stumbled upon your blog and, well, it hurt. It's incredible the amount of topics you are able to talk about extensively and how you can dissect and find interesting stuff in even the most basic concepts.
May I humble ask how on earth can you know all of the things you know, with such attention to detail? Have you been gifted with an excellent memory, magical diet, or is it just magic?
Short answer: hard work and compound interest.
Read more ...The Biggest Problem of SDN
A few weeks ago I decided to join the SDN group on LinkedIn and quickly discovered the biggest problem of SDN – many people, who try to authoritatively talk about it, have no idea what they’re talking about. Here’s a gem (coming from a “network architect”) I found in one of the discussions:
The SDN local controller can punt across to remote datacenters using not only IP, but even UDP over MPLS
Do I have to explain how misguided that statement is?
Read more ...A Burst of SDN Webinars (and a Slew of SDN Workshops)
You might have noticed that I’m running three SDN-related webinars in the next three weeks, which is the highest density of live webinar sessions I ever had. What’s going on?
Before moving on, I’d like to point out that the early bird pricing for our November SDN/SDDC retreat in Miami, Florida, ends on September 1st, and there are only a few tickets left. Time to register ;)
Read more ...Does Your Favorite Startup Support IPv6?
Whenever you talk to a new startup evaluating whether you’d consider including their products in your network, don’t forget to ask them a fundamental question: “does your product support IPv6?”
If they reply “Nobody has ever asked for it”, it’s time to turn around and run away.
Read more ...Enterprise IPv6 Adoption Explained
The OSCON keynote by Simon Wardley explains a number of things, including (lack of) enterprise IPv6 adoption. Enjoy!Video: What Is Cumulus Linux All About?
In May 2015 I invited Dinesh Dutt to talk about Cumulus Linux and its typical use cases on an update session of the Data Center Fabrics Architecture webinar.
As expected, he started with the big picture: what is Cumulus Networks and Cumulus Linux all about?
SDN Will Not Solve Real-Life Enterprise Problems
It’s hard to visit an IT journal web site without stumbling upon an SDN fairy tale. Here’s another one:
The idea is to cut away the manual process of setting up new firewalls, load balancers and other network appliances, and instead open the door to provisioning a new network infrastructure within a few minutes.
And why exactly is it that you can’t do that today?
Read more ...IPv6 and the Swinging Technology Pendulum
35 years ago, mainframes, single-protocol networks (be it SNA or DECnet), and centralized architectures that would make hard-core SDN evangelists gloat with unbridled pride were all the rage. If you’re old enough to remember IBM SNA, you know what I’m talking about.
A few years later, everything changed.
Read more ...Published: Designing Scalable Web Applications (Part 2)
I published the second part of my Designing Scalable Web Applications course on my free content web site.
These presentations focus more on the application-level technologies (client- and server side), but I’m positive you’ll find some useful content in the caching and scale-out applications with load balancing sections.
SDN, SD-WAN and FCoE on Gartner Networking Hype Cycle
Gartner has updated their networking hype cycle. Not surprisingly:
- Ethernet switching fabrics are on the slope of enlightenment (finally – we’ve been educating networking engineers on what they really are for half a decade);
- SDN is well on its way into the trough of disillusionment (shameless plug: I guess not enough people attended real-life SDN workshops) and whitebox switching is going the same way;
- SD-WAN is nearing the peak of inflated expectations;
- FCoE and Long-Distance vMotion will be dead before they reach the plateau.
Gartner won’t give you free access to the graph, but you’ll find it in an article published on The Register.
Can Virtual Routers Compete with Physical Hardware?
One of the participants of the Carrier Ethernet LinkedIn group asked a great question:
When we install a virtual-router of any vendor over an ordinary sever (having general-purpose microprocessor), can it really compete with a physical-router having ASICs, Network Processors…?
Short answer: No … and here’s my longer answer (cross-posted to my blog because not all of my readers participate in that group).
Read more ...