Cisco ACI – Speculation of its Inner Workings
Last week I was at a Cisco users group meeting where some sales engineers were giving a presentation on the new Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) architecture and Nexus 9000 products. It was a very high-level overview, but it was interesting. I had assumed when Cisco made the ACI announcement that it would be based on […]
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The post Cisco ACI – Speculation of its Inner Workings appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Eric Flores.
Show 175 Dying Desktops, Insecure Firewalls, Networking The Internet of Things
This week Greg and Ethan go back and forth on a bunch of current happenings. Data Networking is full of releases, updates and progress. In 80 minutes we will discuss the topics that look important to us.
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The post Show 175 Dying Desktops, Insecure Firewalls, Networking The Internet of Things appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Greg Ferro.
CEF Secret Attributes, Part 2
In Part 1 we saw there were three markings that can be potentially applied to a prefix in CEF. They are the Precedence, qos-group and traffic_index. It’s unfortunate these terms were used because we also find that we are marking prefixes in CEF, not packets, so these terms don’t perfectly map to our traditional sense […]
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The post CEF Secret Attributes, Part 2 appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Dan Massameno.
Microloop!
Don’t look now, but you have microloops. How do I know? Because virtually every network with rings larger than three hops, running a link state protocol, will develop a microloop during normal convergence. Okay, so what’s a microloop, and how dangerous is it? Let’s figure this out looking at the (now rather standard) five router […]
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Secret CEF Attributes, Part 1
Welcome to the first in a series of articles that will explore some of the interesting properties we can insert into CEF, Cisco’s implementation of the Forwarding Information Base (FIB) in Layer-3 rotuers. CEF represents the high-speed forwarding architecture in the Cisco platforms. If we can insert data into the CEF memory structure we can […]
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The post Secret CEF Attributes, Part 1 appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Dan Massameno.
Network Topologies
Resiliency of the networks is almost the most important design criterion which needs to be considered. Packets need to be reached to destination within the time expected by the application. Although too much redundancy will affect MTBF/MTTR curve directly and start to increase MTTR of the entire system, carefully designed network topologies will play a […]
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The post Network Topologies appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Orhan Ergun.
IP/FRR and Centralized Control Planes
I’ve been spending some time in the last few months talking through various fast reroute systems – we’ve looked at one (unconventional!) view of P/Q space, an alternate way of explaining MRT, Not-Via, LFAs, and a few others. Now, let’s close this series by asking: How does all this relate to the “new wave’ of […]
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Please Check Your Feed URLs – FeedBurner Is Dead To Us
We here at Packet Pushers used to use FeedBurner. It was a value-added RSS service that was eventually brought under Google’s mighty power. Sadly, as with Buzz and Wave, Google has killed FeedBurner. While the FeedBurner service is still limping along, we’re seeing unpredictable results. Even the 301 redirects Greg programmed a while back are […]
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The post Please Check Your Feed URLs – FeedBurner Is Dead To Us appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Ethan Banks.
The NSA, surveillance, and Call Records
First off, let me be very clear. I do *not* condone placing backdoors into critical infrastructure such as firewalls and routers. This post is about the packets themselves, and capturing only what is legally allowed. I believe the NSA has the legal right (and the mandate) to do much of what they are currently doing, […]
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The post The NSA, surveillance, and Call Records appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Ken Matlock.
Show 174 – War Stories From the Hot Aisle: The Nightmare Before Christmas, Part 2
“Everything is down! The whole network!! RUN AWAY, RUN AWAY!” Yes, we’ve all had those terrible days in networking, where no one can get to anything & it’s all up to you to get it fixed. At least management is there to help, stomping their feet, making demands, and whining about the dollars lost per […]
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The post Show 174 – War Stories From the Hot Aisle: The Nightmare Before Christmas, Part 2 appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Ethan Banks.
Maximally Redundant Trees
We’ve come almost to the end of our little series on fast reroute; in this episode we’ll look at maximally redundant trees (MRTs) — this episode is going to be a little “graphy,” so get your seatbelts on. The general idea behind IP fast reroute is to precalculate a set of alternate paths that can […]
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Show 173 – War Stories From The Hot Aisle: The Nightmare Before Christmas, Part 1
“Everything is down! The whole network!! RUN AWAY, RUN AWAY!” Yes, we’ve all had those terrible days in networking, where no one can get to anything & it’s all up to you to get it fixed. At least management is there to help, stomping their feet, making demands, and whining about the dollars lost per […]
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The post Show 173 – War Stories From The Hot Aisle: The Nightmare Before Christmas, Part 1 appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Ethan Banks.
Healthy Paranoia Show 20: SDN – Heretic of Security
The known universe has been ruled by the monolithic network device. In this time, the most precious substance in the Universe is the ASIC. The ASIC extends life. The ASIC expands consciousness. The ASIC is vital, it provides the ability to fold space. That is, travel to any part of the network. The ASIC exists […]
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The post Healthy Paranoia Show 20: SDN – Heretic of Security appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Mrs. Y.
Fast Reroute Mechanisms
Network reliability is an important measure for deployability of sensitive applications. When a link, node or SRLG failure occurs in a routed network, there is inevitably a period of disruption to the delivery of traffic until the network reconverges on the new topology. Fast reaction is essential for the failed element. There are two approaches […]
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The post Fast Reroute Mechanisms appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Orhan Ergun.
Make sure you patch your holiday gifts
Let me start off with a question, what are the steps involved when it comes to giving someone a gift? Is it as simple as buy, wrap and handover? For the more traditional gifts like perfume this would be the correct answer but if you are giving electronic gifts then you may be leaving out […]
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Switching to Linux for… Switches?
Like many folks out there, I’m following the rise of “whitebox switching”, and am interested to see if (and where) it takes off. There’s many players out there who are trying to pitch disassociating the software from the hardware, and quite a few hardware manufacturers that are offering various hardware platforms on which to run […]
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The post Switching to Linux for… Switches? appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Will Dennis.
Podcast Planning – Got A Great Network Down Story?
Greg and I want to record a “Nightmare Before Christmas” podcast, where folks come on and tell us their most grisly, horrifying network down story. The idea is a relaxed show chatting around the holiday fire, telling war stories, and being glad it’s all over now. So…got a good story? Want to come on a […]
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The post Podcast Planning – Got A Great Network Down Story? appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Ethan Banks.
Show 172 – Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Security In The Data Center – Sponsored
It’s an exciting time to be a networking geek, with the introduction of new technologies like network virtualization and established vendors like Cisco jumping into the SDN market. But, what about network security? What happens when you move from traditional data center architectures to virtualization, cloud and SDN environments? Palo Alto Networks builds a next-generation […]
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The post Show 172 – Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Security In The Data Center – Sponsored appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Ethan Banks.
F5 drops LAB VE price to $95
During a recent F5 purchase I wanted to get some more F5 lab virtual edition appliances. At my company we have had two and it has been invaluable for testing new configs and training junior engineers in a safe environment that could be trashed and restored at will. At the time we ordered the lab […]
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The post F5 drops LAB VE price to $95 appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Eric Flores.
The Impact of Software Defined X on a Networking organization
Introduction We’re in one of the most exciting times in data networking. While I’m sure we’re all sick of vendors co-opting technologies in their infancy, there is a lot of good work going on to change the fundamentals of moving data (I shudder to call this a paradigm shift; I’ll save that term for life […]
