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Category Archives for "Networking"

Tech Bytes: Pliant Combines APIs, Low Code Approach For Network Automation (Sponsored)

Today on the Tech Bytes podcast we talk with sponsor Pliant about its automation platform. Pliant helps you orchestrate across devices and domains with a low-code approach that uses APIs to automate and orchestrate across your infrastructure.

The post Tech Bytes: Pliant Combines APIs, Low Code Approach For Network Automation (Sponsored) appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Tech Bytes: Pliant Combines APIs, Low Code Approach For Network Automation (Sponsored)

Network automation takes a variety of forms, from individual scripts that handle specific tasks, to workflows that have to be orchestrated across multiple devices and systems. Today on the Tech Bytes podcast we talk with sponsor Pliant about its automation platform. Pliant helps you orchestrate across devices and domains with a low-code approach that uses... Read more »

NB458: Broadcom Debuts On-Chip Neural Net, Lays Off VMware Staff; Okta Breach Gets Worse

Broadcom’s latest Trident ASIC will include a neural net inference engine on the chip that can analyze traffic  and take action in the packet pipeline, but it’s up to customers to build rules and signatures based on their own training data. Broadcom has also announced it will lay off approximately 1,300 VMware employees. Identity provider... Read more »

Routing Through the Forest of Trees

Some friends shared a Reddit post the other day that made me both shake my head and ponder the state of the networking industry. Here is the locked post for your viewing pleasure. It was locked because the comments were going to devolve into a mess eventually. The person making the comment seems to be honest and sincere in their approach to “layer 3 going away”. The post generated a lot of amusement from the networking side of IT about how this person doesn’t understand the basics but I think there’s a deeper issue going on.

Trails To Nowhere

Our visibility of the state of the network below the application interface is very general in today’s world. That’s because things “just work” to borrow an overused phrase. Aside from the occasional troubleshooting exercise to find out why packets destined for Azure or AWS are failing along the way when is the last time you had to get really creative in finding a routing issue in someone else’s equipment? We spend more time now trying to figure out how to make our own networks operate efficiently and less time worrying about what happens to the packets when they leave our organization. Continue reading

Upcoming Pearson Class: Modern Network Troubleshooting

On the 26th of January, I’ll be teaching a webinar over at Safari Books Online (subscription service) called Modern Network Troubleshooting. From the blurb:

The first section of this class considers the nature of resilience, and how design tradeoffs result in different levels of resilience. The class then moves into a theoretical understanding of failures, how network resilience is measured, and how the Mean Time to Repair (MTTR) relates to human and machine-driven factors. One of these factors is the unintended consequences arising from abstractions, covered in the next section of the class.
The class then moves into troubleshooting proper, examining the half-split formal troubleshooting method and how it can be combined with more intuitive methods. This section also examines how network models can be used to guide the troubleshooting process. The class then covers two examples of troubleshooting reachability problems in a small network, and considers using ChaptGPT and other LLMs in the troubleshooting process. A third, more complex example is then covered in a data center fabric.

Register here.

The BGP Origin Attribute

Kristijan Taskovski asked an interesting question related to my BGP AS-prepending lab:

I’ve never personally done this on the net but….wouldn’t the BGP origin code also work with moving one’s ingress traffic similarly to AS PATH?

TL&DR: Sort of, but not exactly. Also, just because you can climb up ropes using shoelaces instead of jumars doesn’t mean you should.

Let’s deal with the moving traffic bit first.

The BGP Origin Attribute

Kristijan Taskovski asked an interesting question related to my BGP AS-prepending lab:

I’ve never personally done this on the net but….wouldn’t the BGP origin code also work with moving one’s ingress traffic similarly to AS PATH?

TL&DR: Sort of, but not exactly. Also, just because you can climb up ropes using shoelaces instead of jumars doesn’t mean you should.

Let’s deal with the moving traffic bit first.

HN711: Get Cloud-Like Operation Of Your Data Center With Juniper Apstra And Terraform (Sponsored)

Today on Heavy Networking, sponsored by Juniper, we’ll talk about how Juniper’s Apstra software can help you operate your on-prem data center more like a public cloud; meaning service provisioning that’s repeatable, standardized, and straightforward to consume. We’ll also talk about how Apstra now works with Terraform to help streamline network self-service.

The post HN711: Get Cloud-Like Operation Of Your Data Center With Juniper Apstra And Terraform (Sponsored) appeared first on Packet Pushers.

HN711: Get Cloud-Like Operation Of Your Data Center With Juniper Apstra And Terraform (Sponsored)

Public clouds abstract away much of the nitty-gritty work that goes into provisioning infrastructure, including networking. Application teams can quickly connect resources and deploy applications without having to know much about the plumbing that links everything together. When they compare the public cloud experience to standing up applications in an on-prem data center, the on-prem... Read more »

Cloudflare Gen 12 Server: Bigger, Better, Cooler in a 2U1N form factor

Two years ago, Cloudflare undertook a significant upgrade to our compute server hardware as we deployed our cutting-edge 11th Generation server fleet, based on AMD EPYC Milan x86 processors. It's nearly time for another refresh to our x86 infrastructure, with deployment planned for 2024. This involves upgrading not only the processor itself, but many of the server's components. It must be able to accommodate the GPUs that drive inference on Workers AI, and leverage the latest advances in memory, storage, and security. Every aspect of the server is rigorously evaluated — including the server form factor itself.

One crucial variable always in consideration is temperature. The latest generations of x86 processors have yielded significant leaps forward in performance, with the tradeoff of higher power draw and heat output. In this post we will explore this trend, and how it informed our decision to adopt a new physical footprint for our next-generation fleet of servers.

In preparation for the upcoming refresh, we conducted an extensive survey of the x86 CPU landscape. AMD recently introduced its latest offerings: Genoa, Bergamo, and Genoa-X, featuring the power of their innovative Zen 4 architecture. At the same time, Intel unveiled Sapphire Rapids as Continue reading