The one and only Avery Pennarun (of the world in which IPv6 was a good design fame) is back with another absolutely-must-read article explaining how various archetypes apply to real-world challenges, including:
If you think none of these applies to networking, you’re probably wrong… but of course please write a comment if you still feel that way after reading Avery’s article.
David Bombal invited me for another short chat – this time on what I recommend young networking engineers just starting their career. As I did a bit of a research I stumbled upon some great recommendations on Quora:
I couldn’t save the pages to Internet Archive (looks like it’s not friendly with Quora), so I can only hope they won’t disappear ;)
David Bombal invited me for another short chat – this time on what I recommend young networking engineers just starting their career. As I did a bit of a research I stumbled upon some great recommendations on Quora:
I couldn’t save the pages to Internet Archive (looks like it’s not friendly with Quora), so I can only hope they won’t disappear ;)
In the previous video in this series, I described how path discovery works in source routing and virtual circuit environments. I couldn’t squeeze the discussion of hop-by-hop forwarding into the same video (it would make the video way too long); you’ll find it in the next video in the same section.
In the previous video in this series, I described how path discovery works in source routing and virtual circuit environments. I couldn’t squeeze the discussion of hop-by-hop forwarding into the same video (it would make the video way too long); you’ll find it in the next video in the same section.
A few months ago I described how you could use JSON Schema to validate your automation data models, host/group variable files, or even Ansible inventory file.
I had to use a weird toolchain to get it done – either ansible-inventory to build a complete data model from various inventory sources, or yq to convert YAML to JSON… and just for the giggles jsonschema CLI command requires the JSON input to reside in a file, so you have to use a temporary file to get the job done.
A few months ago I described how you could use JSON Schema to validate your automation data models, host/group variable files, or even Ansible inventory file.
I had to use a weird toolchain to get it done – either ansible-inventory to build a complete data model from various inventory sources, or yq to convert YAML to JSON… and just for the giggles jsonschema CLI command requires the JSON input to reside in a file, so you have to use a temporary file to get the job done.
One of my readers sent me this question:
My job required me to determine if one IP address is unicast or anycast. Is it possible to get this information from the bgp dump?
TL&DR: Not with anything close to 100% reliability.
If you’re not familiar with IP anycast: it’s a brilliant idea of advertising the same prefix from multiple independent locations, or the same IP address from multiple servers. Works like a charm for UDP (that’s how all root DNS servers are built) and supposedly pretty well across distant-enough locations for TCP (with a long list of caveats when used within a data center).
One of my readers sent me this question:
My job required me to determine if one IP address is unicast or anycast. Is it possible to get this information from the bgp dump?
TL&DR: Not with anything close to 100% reliability. An academic research paper (HT: Andrea di Donato) documents a false-positive rate of around 10%.
If you’re not familiar with IP anycast: it’s a brilliant idea of advertising the same prefix from multiple independent locations, or the same IP address from multiple servers. Works like a charm for UDP (that’s how all root DNS servers are built) and supposedly pretty well across distant-enough locations for TCP (with a long list of caveats when used within a data center).
Now that you know all about regions and availability zones (AZ) and the ways AWS and Azure implement subnets, let’s get to the crux of the original question Daniel Dib sent me:
As I understand it, subnets in Azure span availability zones. Do you see any drawback to this? You mentioned that it’s difficult to create application swimlanes that way. But does subnet matter if your VMs are in different AZs?
It’s time I explain the concepts of application swimlanes and how they apply to availability zones in public clouds.
Now that you know all about regions and availability zones (AZ) and the ways AWS and Azure implement subnets, let’s get to the crux of the original question Daniel Dib sent me:
As I understand it, subnets in Azure span availability zones. Do you see any drawback to this? You mentioned that it’s difficult to create application swimlanes that way. But does subnet matter if your VMs are in different AZs?
It’s time I explain the concepts of application swimlanes and how they apply to availability zones in public clouds.
A while ago Antti Leimio wrote a long twitter thread describing his frustrations with Cisco ACI object model. I asked him for permission to repost the whole thread as those things tend to get lost, and he graciously allowed me to do it, so here we go.
I took a 5 days Cisco DCACI course. This is all new to me. I’m confused. Who is ACI for? Capabilities and completeness of features is fantastic but how to manage this complex system?
A while ago Antti Leimio wrote a long twitter thread describing his frustrations with Cisco ACI object model. I asked him for permission to repost the whole thread as those things tend to get lost, and he graciously allowed me to do it, so here we go.
I took a 5 days Cisco DCACI course. This is all new to me. I’m confused. Who is ACI for? Capabilities and completeness of features is fantastic but how to manage this complex system?
I concluded the Focus on Business Challenges First presentation (part of Business Aspects of Networking Technologies webinar) with a few technology guidelines starting with:
For more guidelines, watch the video (available with Free ipSpace.net Subscription).
I concluded the Focus on Business Challenges First presentation (part of Business Aspects of Networking Technologies webinar) with a few technology guidelines starting with:
For more guidelines, watch the video.
Every now and then I’m getting questions along the lines “why doesn’t X support unequal-cost multipathing (UCMP)?” for X in [ OSPF, BGP, IS-IS ].
To set the record straight: BGP does support some rudimentary form of unequal-cost multipathing with the DMZ Bandwidth community, but it only works across multiple egress points from a single autonomous system. Follow-up nerd knobs described how to use the same community over EBGP sessions; not sure whether anyone implemented that part (comments welcome).
Every now and then I’m getting questions along the lines “why doesn’t X support unequal-cost multipathing (UCMP)?” for X in [ OSPF, BGP, IS-IS ].
To set the record straight: BGP does support some rudimentary form of unequal-cost multipathing with the DMZ Bandwidth community, but it only works across multiple egress points from a single autonomous system. Follow-up nerd knobs described how to use the same community over EBGP sessions; not sure whether anyone implemented that part (comments welcome).
One of my readers was “blessed” with the stretched VLANs requirement combined with the need for inter-VLAN routing and sub-par equipment from a vendor not exactly known for their data center switching products. Before going on, you might want to read his description of the challenge he’s facing and what I had to say about the idea of building stackable switches across multiple locations.
Here’s an overview diagram of what my reader was facing. The core switches in each location work as a single device (virtual chassis), and there’s MLAG between core and edge switches. The early 2000s just called and they were proud of the design (but to be honest, sometimes one has to work with the tools his boss bought, so…).
One of my readers was “blessed” with the stretched VLANs requirement combined with the need for inter-VLAN routing and sub-par equipment from a vendor not exactly known for their data center switching products. Before going on, you might want to read his description of the challenge he’s facing and what I had to say about the idea of building stackable switches across multiple locations.
Here’s an overview diagram of what my reader was facing. The core switches in each location work as a single device (virtual chassis), and there’s MLAG between core and edge switches. The early 2000s just called and they were proud of the design (but to be honest, sometimes one has to work with the tools his boss bought, so…).
Now that we know what regions and availability zones are, let’s go back to Daniel Dib’s question:
As I understand it, subnets in Azure span availability zones. Do you see any drawback to this? Does subnet matter if your VMs are in different AZs?
Wait, what? A subnet is stretched across multiple failure domains? Didn’t Ivan claim that’s ridiculous?
TL&DR: What I claimed was that a single layer-2 network is a single failure domain. Things are a bit more complex in public clouds. Keep reading and you’ll find out why.