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Category Archives for "ipSpace.net"

Was CLNP Really Broken?

One of my readers sent me this question after listening to the podcast with Douglas Comer:

Professor Comer mentioned that IP choose a network attachment address model over an endpoint model because of scalability. He said if you did endpoint addressing it wouldn’t scale. I remember reading a bunch of your blog posts about CNLP (I hope I’m remembering the right acronym) and I believe you liked endpoint addressing better than network attachment point addressing.

As always, the answer is “it depends” (aka “we’re both right” ;).

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Ever Heard of Role-Based Access Control?

During my recent SDN workshops I encountered several networking engineers who use Nexus 1000V in their data center environment, and some of them claimed their organization decided to do so to ensure the separation of responsibilities between networking and virtualization teams.

There are many good reasons one would use Nexus 1000V, but the one above is definitely not one of them.

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Why Would You Want to Attend a Classroom Workshop?

One of my regular subscribers wondered whether it makes sense to attend a live workshop (like the one we’re running in Miami in a few weeks) instead of listening to my webinars:

I am following your blog posts quite regularly, I’ve been a yearly subscriber for more than 3 years now and I’m even trying to attend as many webinars as I can in real time. Is there a real benefit to participate in this classroom event if we are almost aware of all your slide decks and videos?

Absolutely. Here’s what one of the attendees of a recent SDN workshop wrote when asking me whether I would be willing to do an on-site event for his company:

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More Features, Improved Lock-In

Found an interesting article on High Scalability blog (another must-read web site) on how PostgreSQL improves locking behavior in high-volume transaction environment.

Needless to say, the feature is totally proprietaryrather unique and not available in most other database products. Improved locking behavior ⇒ improved lock-in.

Moral of the story: Stop yammering. Networking is no different from any other field of IT.

Update: Yep, I goofed up on the proprietary bit (it was one of those “I don’t think this word means what you think it means” gotchas). However, if you think open source product can't have proprietary features or you can’t get locked into an open-source product, I congratulate you on your rosy perspective. Reality smudged mine years ago.

The Lack of Historic Knowledge Is so Frustrating

Every time I’m explaining the intricacies of new technologies to networking engineers, I try to use analogies with older well-known technologies, trying to make it simpler to grasp the architectural constraints of the shiny new stuff.

Unfortunately, most engineers younger than ~35 years have no idea what I’m talking about – all they know are Ethernet, IP and MPLS.

Just to give you an example – here’s a slide from my SDN workshop.

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Get Digital Content with the SDN Workshop

Last week I ran two SDN workshops, and in both of them the participants were busy taking notes as I explained the intricacies of concepts like SDN, NFV and network automation, and tools like OpenFlow or BGP.

However, how often did you revisit notes taken at a presentation and kept wondering “what exactly was he trying to say?” … or felt like the training you attended was like drinking from a fire hose and you missed most of the good stuff?

You won’t have that problem during the Miami SDN/NFV/SDDC retreat.

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Winston Churchill on IPv6

While researching for another blog post, I stumbled upon this speech by Winston Churchill:

When the situation was manageable it was neglected, and now that it is thoroughly out of hand we apply too late the remedies which then might have effected a cure. There is nothing new in the story. It is as old as the Sibylline Books. It falls into that long, dismal catalogue of the fruitlessness of experience and the confirmed unteachability of mankind. Want of foresight, unwillingness to act when action would be simple and effective, lack of clear thinking, confusion of counsel until the emergency comes, until self-preservation strikes its jarring gong -these are the features which constitute the endless repetition of history.

Obviously mr. Churchill wasn't talking about IPv6 but about way more serious matters… but it's also obvious he was right abut the unteachability of mankind.

Get ipSpace.net Subscription while Attending the Rome SDN/NFV Event

Reiss Romoli, the fantastic organizers of my SDN/NFV event in Rome, Italy in late October are offering you a free personal ipSpace.net subscription – a saving of $299 or approximately EUR 270.

All you have to do to qualify is (A) download and fill in the registration form, (B) send it to Reiss Romoli and (C) pay before attending the webinar.

Yeah, I know the PDF form says “fax it back” – everyone has to use the tools that work best in their environment.

Hope we'll meet in warm and sunny Rome in a few weeks!

Software-Defined IXP with Laurent Vanbever on Software Gone Wild

A while ago I started discussing the intricate technical details of fibbing (an ingenious way of implementing traffic engineering with traditional OSPF) with Laurent Vanbever and other members of his group, and we decided to record a podcast on this topic.

Things never go as planned in a live chat, and we finished talking about another one of his projects – software defined Internet exchange point (SDX), the topic of Episode 41 of Software Gone Wild.

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