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Category Archives for "Networking"

Networking in the Cloud – Different but the Same

Networking in the cloud is impressive. Building redundant internet access is as easy as attaching an internet gateway (IGW) to your VPC. In an on-premises network we would have to build VLANs, subnets, IGPs, possibly HSRP and BGP etc. This holds true for many of the services in the cloud.

I’ve seen statements as “The networking team is going away because everyone is moving to the cloud”. “The networking team is going away because webscaler/startup company X networking team is only Y number of people”. This is like comparing apples to ostridges. I call BS. Why?

Networking in the cloud is relatively easy when you can leverage the standard services available, which is not always the case. It’s relatively easy because people are in the beginning of their cloud journey. They have one or a couple of VPCs. If they really move a major part of their app stack to the cloud, networking won’t be so easy. Let’s think about some examples.

In the cloud you can provision resources into different subnets, meaning different availability zones. This leads to a very high availability but it’s not enough. To build a really resilient service you need to be in different regions. Continue reading

The Long And Winding Network Road

How do you see your network? Odds are good it looks like a big collection of devices and protocols that you use to connect everything. It doesn’t matter what those devices are. They’re just another source of packets that you have to deal with. Sometimes those devices are more needy than others. Maybe it’s a phone server that needs QoS. Or a storage device that needs a dedicated transport to guarantee that nothing is lost.

But what does the network look like to those developers?

Work Is A Highway

When is the last time you thought about how the network looks to people? Here’s a thought exercise for you:

Think about a highway. Think about all the engineering that goes into building a highway. How many companies are involved in building it. How many resources are required. Now, think of that every time you want to go to the store.

It’s a bit overwhelming. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of companies that are dedicated to building highways and other surface streets. Perhaps they are architects or construction crews or even just maintenance workers. But all of them have a function. All for the sake of letting us drive on Continue reading

Updates To The CCIE/CCDE Evolving Technologies

Cisco just rolled out the Evolving Technologies v1.1 update, which will affect anyone taking their CCIE certification exams on, or after, August 30, 2018. Fortunately, the v1.1 updates are fairly minor. The CCIE/CCDE Evolving Technologies section still includes three overall categories; Cloud, Network Programmability and Internet of things, and still makes up 10% of all CCIE/CCDE written exams. However, changes can be found in the specific topics tested in each of the evolving technologies categories.

Cloud – v1.1

Compare and contrast public, private, hybrid, and multi-cloud design considerations

  • Infrastructure, platform, and software as a service (XaaS)
  • Performance, scalability, and high availability
  • Security implications, compliance, and policy
  • Workload migration

Describe cloud infrastructure and operations

  • Compute virtualization (containers and virtual machines)
  • Connectivity (virtual switches, SD-WAN and SD-Access)
  • Virtualization functions (NFVi, VNF, and L4/L1)
  • Automation and orchestration tools (cloud center, DNA-center, and Kubernetes)

Network Programmability (SDN) – v1.1

Describe architectural and operational Considerations for a programmable network

  • Data models and structures (YANG, JSON and XML)
  • Device programmability (gRPC, NETCONF and RESTCONF)
  • Controller based network design (policy driven configuration and northbound/ southbound APIs)
  • Configuration management tools (agent and agent-less) and version control systems (Git and SVN)

Internet of Things (IOT) Continue reading

Weekend Reads 083118

Portland, Maine—The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the ACLU are urging the state’s highest courts in Massachusetts and Maine to rule that law enforcement agents need a warrant to access real-time location information from cell phones, a clear application of a landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling from June. @EFF

Survey data from Qualia suggests that as DevOps becomes mainstream, both organizational resources and budget allocation tied to measurable business outcomes will be attached to this method of rapid application development. DevOps enables a faster iterative process that drives innovation while doing more with less and increasing efficiency. —Thomas MacIsaac @Data Center Journal

Cobalt Group (aka TEMP.Metastrike), active since at least late 2016, have been suspected in attacks across dozens of countries. The group primarily targets financial organizations, often with the use of ATM malware. Researchers also believe they are responsible for a series of attacks on the SWIFT banking system which costs millions in damages to the impacted entities. @Netscout

At the end of our last post we had just emerged from the Fireswamp only to be captured by the six-fingered man. No, no, that’s not right. We had just caught up to the present, in which the Continue reading

Indigenous Communities: “Stuck…Between Technology and Tradition”

In November 2017, the Internet Society hosted the inaugural Indigenous Connectivity Summit in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The event brought together community network operators, Internet service providers, community members, researchers, policy makers, and Indigenous leadership to work together to bridge the connectivity gap in indigenous communities in North America. One of the participants shared her story.

Christel White, geographic information system (GIS) specialist for the Pueblo of Cochiti, is no stranger to intertribal dynamics. White is an enrolled member of the Onondaga people and grew up on the Seneca Nation reservation in New York State. In her current role, she ponders how the specific culture and needs of the people of Cochiti impacts the role of connectivity. “I want to bring in GIS online, but we don’t want cultural sites out in circulation,” explains White. “Do we want new land on there?”

The lack of Internet speed in tribal offices means White currently works from home, but says that it impacts her ability to interact with the public. If someone comes into the office with a question, White is not always physically there, but she can’t otherwise complete her work without a better connection.  “Indigenous communities are often stuck on Continue reading

IoT gets smarter but still needs backend analytics

One way of looking at IoT deployments is this – a large array of not-particularly-sophisticated endpoints, mindlessly sending individual data points like temperature and pressure levels to either an edge device somewhere on a factory floor, or all the way out to a cloud back-end or data center.And that’s largely correct, in many cases, but it’s increasingly not the whole story – IoT endpoints are getting closer and closer to the ability to do their own analysis, leading to simpler architectures and more responsive systems. It’s not the right fit for every use case, but there are types of IoT implementation that are already putting the responsibility for the customizing their own metrics on the devices themselves, and more that could be a fit for such an architecture.To read this article in full, please click here

VMware has edge, AI, blockchain ambitions

Fully baked products weren’t the only technologies on display at the VMworld conference in Las Vegas this week; VMware previewed three in-the-works projects related to edge computing, artificial intelligence and enterprise blockchain.The first is Project Dimension, which aims to deliver the functionality of VMware’s cloud offerings to the edge as a managed service. Project Dimension will combine the elements of VMware Cloud Foundation – including software-defined services for compute, storage, network and security, along with cloud management capabilities – in a hyperconverged form factor that’s operated by VMware. [ Read also: How to plan a software-defined data-center network ] Just as VMware Cloud on AWS manages a customer’s infrastructure in the Amazon cloud, Project Dimension will manage a customer’s on-premises data-center and edge locations, such as branch offices and warehouse sites.To read this article in full, please click here

VMware has edge, AI, blockchain ambitions

Fully baked products weren’t the only technologies on display at the VMworld conference in Las Vegas this week; VMware previewed three in-the-works projects related to edge computing, artificial intelligence and enterprise blockchain.The first is Project Dimension, which aims to deliver the functionality of VMware’s cloud offerings to the edge as a managed service. Project Dimension will combine the elements of VMware Cloud Foundation – including software-defined services for compute, storage, network and security, along with cloud management capabilities – in a hyperconverged form factor that’s operated by VMware. [ Read also: How to plan a software-defined data-center network ] Just as VMware Cloud on AWS manages a customer’s infrastructure in the Amazon cloud, Project Dimension will manage a customer’s on-premises data-center and edge locations, such as branch offices and warehouse sites.To read this article in full, please click here

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