With the vast marketing budgets from big vendors and their well paid "evangelists", the startups vying to introduce new methods and the clamour of engineers trying to understand new technology it might be time to pause and remember that Software Defined Networking was a customer-driven initiative. Vendors had to be forced to accept that SDN was a necessary change.
The post SDN Started as a Customer Movement (Not a Vendor Innovation) appeared first on EtherealMind.
IETF RFC on the Standards Tracks that talks about the problem of chaining headers in IPv6. I’m getting a sense of deja-vu since this was also has issue with IPv4 and, ultimately, use of chained IPv4 headers died away. If they encounter an unrecognised extension header type, some firewalls treat the packet as suspect and drop it. Unfortunately, […]
The post Response: RFC 7045 – Transmission and Processing of IPv6 Extension Headers appeared first on EtherealMind.
The IP PBX business is shrinking as mobile phones replace desk phones. More importantly, voice calls are replaced with chat applications like Skype, FaceTime, SnapChat. Modern companies are using messaging platforms like Slack to replace time wasting telephone calls – we run the Packet Pushers business zero telephone calls. I’ve been predicting this for a year […]
The post Response: IP PBX sales decline 10% | Dell’Oro appeared first on EtherealMind.
Lots of people claiming that scripting works for automation and, for a few scripts or tasks, you can get a lot done for not much effort. My experiences with scripting have left me bitter and jaded. Here is why.
The post Scripting Does Not Scale For Network Automation appeared first on EtherealMind.
Extreme Network now charges a license fee for ports that have 40G/100G OEM or third party SFPs installed. If you don't purchase a license within 90 days, it will limit bandwidth to 25%. How crappy is that ? Hiding the full price of the switch in SFP pricing strategies is a dumb idea that all the vendors have, what about simply being honest and calling it what it is - a per-port licensing fee designed to extract more revenue from a shrinking market.
The post Response: Extreme Charges License Fee When Using OEM SFPs, Limits Bandwidth appeared first on EtherealMind.
Collection of useful, relevant or just fun places on the Internets for 30th June 2014 and a bit commentary about what I’ve found interesting about them: Minimum Viable Bureaucracy, June 2014 Edition // Speaker Deck – Enjoyed this presentation on “Minimum Viable Bureauracy” – some stimulating ideas on how to build better managers of […]
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I'm completing a report for InformationWeek where the results suggest that customer have declining interest in converged hardware platforms. Then I noticed this post from Cisco on sales of FlexPod.
The post Musing: Flexpod at $2B Run Rate, VCE at $1.8B – Thats Unexpected appeared first on EtherealMind.
The WAN Optimisation market shrank by 12% in Q1. Predictable and unsurprising since WanOp is a enhancing technology that only sells when the market is quiet and stable. Managing WanOp complexity is a problem no one wants.
The post Response: WAN Optimization Market Declines 12 Percent Sequentially Indicating Softening Demand appeared first on EtherealMind.
Facebook develops it's own operating system for switches. This shows that OS's like Cisco's IOS and Juniper's Junos are under attack and devalues those business. The destruction of the software moat means that customers have far more choice for their networks.
The post Thought: What Facebook Wedge, Cumulus Linux Shows About Network Operating Systems appeared first on EtherealMind.
It is common wisdom that BGP is awesome because, you know, … something. It runs the Internet therefore it must good. It can be extended and that makes it good. Lots of vendors use it ….. Hang on. When you think about it there are no good, solid BGP implementation in open source. Quagga is […]
The post Thought: Why Are There No Good Open Source BGP Implementations ? appeared first on EtherealMind.
For the last 20 years, L2 tree-based network topologies meant that the only practical design methodology was to buy large, vertically scaled switch chassis for the core of the data centre. This limitation was largely due to the tree-structure forced on LAN networking by Spanning Tree Protocol. For every new device at point Access/1 we […]
The post Switch Prices Will Get Cheaper. Design Models Will Change. appeared first on EtherealMind.
Collection of useful, relevant or just fun places on the Internets for 12th June 2014 and a bit commentary about what I’ve found interesting about them: Will Network Engineers Become Programmers? « ipSpace.net by @ioshints – Ivan explains his view on the ways that network folks will work with programmers. I think he describes […]
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Couple of quotes from John Chambers keynote during Cisco Live that I seemed to leap out at me: “You are going to see a brutal, brutal consolidation of the IT industry where out of the top five players, only two or three of us will be meaningful in as quick as five years.” “When we […]
The post Musing: Cisco Playing the Underdog appeared first on EtherealMind.
Takeaway - Corsa Networks is focussed on provided a hardware data plane for SDN WAN use cases.
The post Briefing: Corsa Technology appeared first on EtherealMind.
This article at Seeking Alpha shows that John Chambers sold more than 30% his Cisco shares last month and is just one of 8 other executives who sold significant numbers of shares in the last month.
The post Response: John Chambers sold more than 30% of his Cisco shares in last month. Heavy sales from others. Thats not good. appeared first on EtherealMind.
I'm be in San Francisco next week and available of meetings and #BeerOclocks
The post Lets Meet: Travelling in San Francisco Jun16-22, 2014 appeared first on EtherealMind.
For the last 20 years, a “silicon moat” that has protected Cisco and other networking vendors from market competition. Arista was one of the first startups to embrace merchant silicon,open source software and a modern software development methodology to focus on core value like reliability and features.
The post Perspective on Arista IPO and Market Positioning appeared first on EtherealMind.
HP Discover is happening this week and have three announcements that I'm summarising here. They are Virtual Cloud Network (VCN), FlexFabric 7900 switch and a supporting package of consulting to implement cloud in your organisation.
The post Briefing: HP Helion, Virtual Cloud Networking, FlexFabric 7900, SDN and OpenStack at HP Discover appeared first on EtherealMind.
Sometimes it looks right in the drawing tool but doesn't look right in the document. I forgot about balancing the image with the way that it looks on the page with words around it. Another post in my series on Network Diagrams.
The post Network Diagrams: Font Selection and Production Context. Choosing Slab or Thin fonts appeared first on EtherealMind.
In this transcript from Seeking Alpha, Gary Moore, Chief Operating Office of Cisco claims that " eight of the global ten over-the-top providers like Amazon are huge Cisco customers". For network architect & strategy types, it's worth reading to see how Cisco intends to extract more revenue from your budget. In particular there are several references to Cisco "analytics service offerings" which Mr Moore states are opportunities for upsell in SmartNet maintenance. It might be worth looking into those products to prepare a "defense against the dark arts" from Cisco account managers.
The post Cisco COO Claims Amazon as Huge Customer and Other Insights appeared first on EtherealMind.