One of my users couldn’t get the inter-VRF NAT to work after watching the DMVPN webinars (no real surprise there, the VRF lite concept is covered in more details in the Enterprise MPLS/VPN webinar) so I decided to write a short document describing the details.
After the fantastic Docker 101 webinar by Matt Oswalt a few people approached me saying “that was great, but we’d need something more on Docker networking”, and during one of my frequent chats with Dinesh Dutt he mentioned that he already had the slides covering that topic.
Problem solved… and Dinesh decided to do it as a free webinar (thank you!), so all you have to do is register. Hurry up, there are only 1000 places left ;)
Failure to use DNS, IP addresses embedded in the code, ignoring the physical realities (like bandwidth and latency)… the list of mistakes that eventually get dumped into networking engineer’s lap is depressing.
It’s easy to reach the conclusion that the people making those mistakes must be stupid or lazy… but in reality most of them never realized they were causing someone else problems because nobody told them so.
Read more ...After I completed the LAN-over-RS-232 project, it was obvious (well, not in retrospect) that the solution to every problem must be Z80 computers connected with some crazy RS-232 wiring. A few years later we had to write an application to support rally races. Guess what the solution was ;)
I stumbled upon a great description of how you can go bankrupt in 45 minutes due to a manual deployment process. The most relevant part of it:
Any time your deployment process relies on humans reading and following instructions you are exposing yourself to risk. Humans make mistakes. The mistakes could be in the instructions, in the interpretation of the instructions, or in the execution of the instructions.
And no, it's not just application deployment. A similar disaster could happen in your network.
Julien Lucek concluded his PCEP and BGP-LS webinar with a lengthy Q&A session addressing all sorts of questions from the audience (to access all videos in this webinar, register here).
It was early 1980s and I was just entering my MacGyver phase when someone asked me “could you make a local area network out of RS-232-based shared bus?” Sure, why not, it can’t be that hard…
I stumbled upon a great ACM article comparing challenges of distributed systems with well-known milestones of modern physics.
The modern networks are probably the ultimate distributed systems. Now take the ideas from that article and apply them to the Centralized Control Plane concept (the last time I checked the marketers were still promoting that academic marvel).
Tore Anderson has been talking about IPv6-only data centers (and running a production one) for years. We know Facebook decided to go down that same path… but how hard would it be to start from scratch?
Not too hard if you want to do it, know what you're doing, and are willing to do more than buy boxes from established vendors. Donatas Abraitis documented one such approach, and he's not working for a startup but a 12-year-old company. So, don't claim it's impossible ;)
Summer is a great time to do odd jobs that you always wanted to do but never found time for. One of mine: document the crazy stuff I’ve been doing decades ago. Starting point: how I got into networking in 1980s.
One of my readers sent me a lengthy email asking my opinion about his ideas for new data center design (yep, I pointed out there’s a service for that while replying to his email ;). He started with:
I have to design a DR solution for a large enterprise. They have two data centers connected via Fabric Path.
There’s a red flag right there…
Read more ...While some people spread misinformation others work hard to figure out how to make TCP work on exotic links with low bandwidth and one second RTT.
Ulrich Speidel published a highly interesting article on APNIC blog describing the challenges of satellite Internet access and the approach (network coded TCP) they took to avoid them.
Read more ...One of my readers sent me a link to SoftEther, a VPN solution that
[…] penetrates your network admin's troublesome firewall for overprotection. […] Any deep-packet inspection firewalls cannot detect SoftEther VPN's transport packets as a VPN tunnel, because SoftEther VPN uses Ethernet over HTTPS for camouflage.
What could possibly go wrong with such a great solution?
Read more ...In one of my ExpertExpress engagements the customer expressed the desire to manage their firewall with OpenFlow (using OpenDaylight) and I said, “That doesn’t make much sense”. Here’s why:
Obviously if you can't imagine your life without OpenDaylight, or if your yearly objectives include "deploying OpenDaylight-based SDN solution", you can use it as a REST-to-NETCONF translator assuming your firewall supports NETCONF.
Read more ...Every time I have a network automation presentation (be it a 2-day workshop or a 45 minute keynote) I get the same question afterwards: “How do we deal with exceptions?”
The correct answer is obvious: “there should be no exceptions, because one-offs usually cost you more than you earn with them,” but as always the reality tends to intervene.
Read more ...Let’s continue our journey toward two-switch data center. What can we do after virtualizing the workload, getting rid of legacy technologies, and reducing the number of server uplinks to two?
How about replacing dedicated storage boxes with distributed file system?
In late September, Howard Marks will talk about software-defined storage in my Building Next Generation Data Center course. The course is sold out, but if you register for the spring 2017 session, you’ll get access to recording of Howard’s talk.
My friend Jeremy Stretch wrote an IPAM+DCIM tool for Digital Ocean and open-sourced it. As the tool was designed by networking engineers to manage data center networks (more in Jeremy’s blog post), it might be a better fit than other tools out there. In any case, check it out and let me know how it works.
This blog post was written almost two years ago (and sat half-forgotten in a Word file somewhere in my Dropbox), but as it seems not much has changed in the meantime, it’s time to publish it anyway.
I was listening to the fantastic SDN Trinity podcast while biking around Slovenian hills and almost fell off the bike while furiously nodding to a statement along the lines of “I hate how every SDN vendor loves to bash networking engineers.”
Read more ...Few years ago a bunch of engineers agreed that the customers need a comprehensive “IPv6 Buyer’s Guide” and thus RIPE-554 was born. There are also IPv6 certification labs, US Government IPv6 profile and other initiatives. The common problem: all these things are complex.
However, it’s extremely easy to get what you want as Ron Broersma explained during his presentation at recent Slovenian IPv6 meeting. All it takes is a single paragraph in the RFP saying something along these lines:
The equipment must have the required functionality and performance in IPv6-only environment.
Problem solved (the proof is left as an exercise for the reader… or you could cheat and watch Ron’s presentation, which you should do anyway ;).
Now that we know which definitions of SDN make no sense (and which one might) let’s see what a typical architecture of an SDN solution might look like.
I described some of them in the SDN 101 webinar, for more details watch the SDN Architectures and Deployment Guidelines webinar.