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Category Archives for "ipSpace.net"

Fruit Drops and Packet Drops

Urban legends claim that Sir Isaac Newton started thinking about gravity when an apple dropped on his head. Regardless of its origins, his theory successfully predicted planetary motions and helped us get people to the moon… there was just this slight problem with Mercury’s precession.

Likewise, his laws of motion worked wonderfully until someone started crashing very small objects together at very high speeds, or decided to see what happens when you give electrons two slits to go through.

Then there was the tiny problem of light traveling at the same speed in all directions… even on objects moving in different directions.

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Fruit Drops and Packet Drops

Urban legends claim that Sir Isaac Newton started thinking about gravity when an apple dropped on his head. Regardless of its origins, his theory successfully predicted planetary motions and helped us get people to the moon… there was just this slight problem with Mercury’s precession.

Likewise, his laws of motion worked wonderfully until someone started crashing very small objects together at very high speeds, or decided to see what happens when you give electrons two slits to go through.

Then there was the tiny problem of light traveling at the same speed in all directions… even on objects moving in different directions.

The Never-Ending "My Overlay Is Better Than Yours" Saga

I published a blog post describing how complex the underlay supporting VMware NSX still has to be (because someone keeps pretending a network is just a thick yellow cable), and the tweet announcing it admittedly looked like a clickbait.

[Blog] Do We Need Complex Data Center Switches for VMware NSX Underlay

Martin Casado quickly replied NO (probably before reading the whole article), starting a whole barrage of overlay-focused neteng-versus-devs fun.

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The Never-Ending “My Overlay Is Better Than Yours” Saga

I published a blog post describing how complex the underlay supporting VMware NSX still has to be (because someone keeps pretending a network is just a thick yellow cable), and the tweet announcing it admittedly looked like a clickbait.

[Blog] Do We Need Complex Data Center Switches for VMware NSX Underlay

Martin Casado quickly replied NO (probably before reading the whole article), starting a whole barrage of overlay-focused neteng-versus-devs fun.

Automation Story: Building a Network Inventory Database

What’s the next logical automation step after you cleaned up device configurations and started using configuration templates? It obviously depends on your pain points; for Anne Baretta it was a network inventory database stored in SQL tables (and thus readily accessible from his other projects).

Notes

  • I’m always amazed that we have to solve simple problems decades after the glitzy slide decks from network management vendors proclaimed them solved;
  • I’m also saddened that it’s often really hard to get data out of a network management product;
  • Check out our network automation course when you’re ready to start your own automation journey.

Automation Story: Building a Network Inventory Database

What’s the next logical automation step after you cleaned up device configurations and started using configuration templates? It obviously depends on your pain points; for Anne Baretta it was a network inventory database stored in SQL tables (and thus readily accessible from his other projects).

Notes

  • I’m always amazed that we have to solve simple problems decades after the glitzy slide decks from network management vendors proclaimed them solved;
  • I’m also saddened that it’s often really hard to get data out of a network management product;
  • Check out our network automation course when you’re ready to start your own automation journey.

Podcast: BGP in Public Cloud Revisited

After my response to the BGP is a hot mess topic, Corey Quinn graciously invited me to discuss BGP issues on his podcast. It took us a long while to set it up, but we eventually got there… and the results were published last week. Hope you’ll enjoy our chat.

I talked about (lack of) network security in How Networks Really Work webinar. I’ll cover similar topics in the Upcoming Internet Challenges webinar.

Podcast: BGP in Public Cloud Revisited

After my response to the BGP is a hot mess topic, Corey Quinn graciously invited me to discuss BGP issues on his podcast. It took us a long while to set it up, but we eventually got there… and the results were published last week. Hope you’ll enjoy our chat.

I talked about (lack of) network security in How Networks Really Work webinar. I’ll cover similar topics in the Upcoming Internet Challenges webinar.

Worth Reading: Why Must Systems Be Operated?

Every now and then I find an IT professional claiming we should not be worried about split-brain scenarios because you have redundant links.

I might understand that sentiment coming from software developers, but I also encountered it when discussing stretched clusters or even SDN controllers deployed across multiple data centers.

Finally I found a great analogy you might find useful. A reader of my blog pointed me to the awesome Why Must Systems Be Operated blog post explaining the same problem from the storage perspective, so the next time you might want to use this one: “so you’re saying you don’t need backup because you have RAID disks”. If someone agrees with that, don’t walk away… RUN!

Worth Reading: Why Must Systems Be Operated?

Every now and then I find an IT professional claiming we should not be worried about split-brain scenarios because you have redundant links.

I might understand that sentiment coming from software developers, but I also encountered it when discussing stretched clusters or even SDN controllers deployed across multiple data centers.

Finally I found a great analogy you might find useful. A reader of my blog pointed me to the awesome Why Must Systems Be Operated blog post explaining the same problem from the storage perspective, so the next time you might want to use this one: “so you’re saying you don’t need backup because you have RAID disks”. If someone agrees with that, don’t walk away… RUN!

Do We Need Complex Data Center Switches for VMware NSX Underlay

Got this question from one of ipSpace.net subscribers:

Do we really need those intelligent datacenter switches for underlay now that we have NSX in our datacenter? Now that we have taken a lot of the intelligence out of our underlying network, what must the underlying network really provide?

Reading the marketing white papers the answer would be IP connectivity… but keep in mind that building your infrastructure based on information from vendor white papers usually gives you the results your gullibility deserves.

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Webinars in January 2020

January 2020 was one of the busiest months we ever had:

You can get immediate access to all these webinars with Standard or Expert ipSpace.net subscription.

Be Careful When Using New Features

During a recent workshop I made a comment along the lines “be careful with feature X from vendor Y because it took vendor Z two years to fix all the bugs in a very similar feature”, and someone immediately asked “are you saying it doesn’t work?

My answer: “I never said that, I just drew inferences from other people’s struggles.”

A Step Back

Networking operating systems are probably some of the most complex pieces of software out there. Distributed systems are hard. Real-time distributed systems are even harder. Real-time distributed systems running on top of eventually-consistent distributed databases are extra fun.

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Video: The Network Is Not Reliable

After introducing the fallacies of distributed computing in the How Networks Really Work webinar, I focused on the first one: the network is (not) reliable.

While that might be understood by most networking professionals (and ignored by many developers), here’s an interesting shocker: even TCP is not always reliable (see also: Joel Spolsky’s take on Leaky Abstractions).

You need Free ipSpace.net Subscription to watch the video, and the Standard ipSpace.net Subscription to register for upcoming live sessions.