Next-Generation Assurance in NFV Networks
Download the Huawei White Paper, In the digital era, communications service providers (CSPs) are undergoing a technological evolution, and network virtualization is playing a key role—in particular, network functions virtualization (NFV). NFV offers reduced time to market, agility, innovation, an open ecosystem to avoid vendor lock-in, and future CAPEX and OPEX reduction. However, operational transformation... Read more →
Developing a Hybrid Plan for SD-WAN Q&A
Thanks to all who joined us for the Comcast Business 2017 SD-WAN and Virtual Edge Report webinar, Developing a Hybrid Plan for SD-WAN, where they discussed how to ease into SD-WAN to test and experience new business capabilities across a distributed enterprise. After the webinar we took questions from the audience. Unfortunately we ran out... Read more →
Wi-Fi Capacity Infographic
Learn tips and tricks for building a high-performance WLAN!
I teamed up with the great staff at Ekahau to put together this infographic about how to design and deploy high capacity Wi-Fi. It's the second poster in the series, following the Wi-Fi Design Poster that focused on radio frequency (RF) factors.
The Wi-Fi Capacity Infographic covers:
- An overview of airtime and why it is important
- Understanding the two primary factors affecting airtime:
- Airtime within a cell
- Airtime across cells
- Methods to maximize airtime efficiency to get the most out of your WLAN
- Channel inventory as it relates to capacity
- How client capabilities affect airtime consumption, and hence capacity, in a WLAN
- Factors to consider when selecting infrastructure to deploy
- Factors to consider with infrastructure placement and configuration
- Features available within Ekahau Site Survey to set you up for success
Download the Wi-Fi Capacity Infographic today!
Alibaba Cloud Next-Gen Data Center Uses Cisco Tech
The companies will collaborate on other areas including data center interconnection in the future.
HPE, Rackspace to Sell Pay-as-You-Go OpenStack Private Cloud
They will offer similar pay-per-use private clouds based on VMware and Microsoft Azure Stack next year.
NetDevOpEd: The power of network verification
Microsoft just published information on their internal tool called “CrystalNet” which Microsoft defines as “a high-fidelity, cloud-scale network emulator in daily use at Microsoft. We built CrystalNet to help our engineers in their quest to improve the overall reliability of our networking infrastructure.” You can read more about their tool in this detailed ACM Paper. But what I want to talk about is how this amazing technology is accessible to you, at any organization, right now, with network verification using Cumulus VX.
What Microsoft has accomplished is truly amazing. They can simulate their network environment and prevent nearly 70% of the network issues they experienced in a two-year period. They have the ability to spin up hundreds of nodes with the exact same configurations and protocols they run in production. Then applying network tests, they verify if proposed changes will have negative impact on applications and services. This work took the team of Microsoft researchers over two years to develop. It’s really quite the feat!
What I find exciting about this is it validates exactly what we at Cumulus have been preaching for the last two years as well. The ability to make a 1:1 mirror of Continue reading
OneAccess OS Manages Physical, Virtual Network Functions
The telco journey “is going to take some time.”
Learning to Ask Questions
One thing I’m often asked in email and in person is: why should I bother learning theory? After all, you don’t install SPF in your network; you install a router or switch, which you then configure OSPF or IS-IS on. The SPF algorithm is not exposed to the user, and does not seem to really have any impact on the operation of the network. Such internal functionality might be neat to know, but ultimately–who cares? Maybe it will be useful in some projected troubleshooting situation, but the key to effective troubleshooting is understanding the output of the device, rather than in understanding what the device is doing.
In other words, there is no reason to treat network devices as anything more than black boxes. You put some stuff in, other stuff comes out, and the vendor takes care of everything in the middle. I dealt with a related line of thinking in this video, but what about this black box argument? Do network engineers really need to know what goes on inside the vendor’s black box?
Let me anser this question with another question. Wen you shift to a new piece of hardware, how do you know what you are Continue reading
Turn Network Engineers into Software Engineers
Peyton Koran, Director of Technical Engagement at Electronic Arts, delivered a great session on why network vendors are losing to open source and whitebox. His view is that network engineers need to embrace software engineering, be flexible. Vendors and VARs are no longer working to benefit of the customer but to benefit themselves with increased […]
CNCF Launches Kubernetes Conformance Certification Program
Companies that gain certification can use Kubernetes as part of their product name.
Qualcomm Tosses Out Broadcom’s Unsolicited Bid
Qualcomm said the offer significantly undervalued its leadership position.
Thwarting the Tactics of the Equifax Attackers
We are now 3 months on from one of the biggest, most significant data breaches in history, but has it redefined people's awareness on security?
The answer to that is absolutely yes, awareness is at an all-time high. Awareness, however, does not always result in positive action. The fallacy which is often assumed is "surely, if I keep my software up to date with all the patches, that's more than enough to keep me safe?". It's true, keeping software up to date does defend against known vulnerabilities, but it's a very reactive stance. The more important part is protecting against the unknown.
Something every engineer will agree on is that security is hard, and maintaining systems is even harder. Patching or upgrading systems can lead to unforeseen outages or unexpected behaviour due to other fixes which may be applied. This, in most cases, can cause huge delays in the deployment of patches or upgrades, due to requiring either regression testing or deployment in a staging environment. Whilst processes are followed, and tests are done, systems are sat vulnerable, ready to be exploited if they are exposed to the internet.
Looking at the wider landscape, an increase in security research Continue reading
Network Break 161: Broadcom Bids For Qualcomm; Level 3’s BGP Blues
On today's Network Break we analyze Broadcom's bid for Qualcomm, Level 3's BGP misconfiguration, a new Mellanox switch & more tech news. The post Network Break 161: Broadcom Bids For Qualcomm; Level 3’s BGP Blues appeared first on Packet Pushers.
Reflections from Copenhagen: RIPE NCC IPv6 Hackathon and Danish IPv6 Day
On 4-5 November, a group of enthusiastic and skillful people gathered at the 6th RIPE NCC hackathon with a theme of IPv6. The event was organized by RIPE NCC and DKNOG, sponsored by Comcast, hosted by IT University of Copenhagen and aimed to bring together open-minded developers and network engineers to work on different ideas and projects from the IPv6 field.
I was honoured to be a jury member and even before the hackathon we were quite busy rating all the submissions that came in, as the number of hackathon participants was limited. All potential participants had to submit a short bio, explain what kind of development (programming) knowledge they had, and also what their ideas or expectations for the hackathon were. We selected 24 participants – and what a skillful bunch that was! In total we were 33 people in the room, 24 participants, 5 jurors and 4 RIPE NCC staff for on-site support.
On Saturday, 4 November, the group came together at IT University of Copenhagen and after a short opening and update on logistics and rules of the hackathon, people got to work. First was a “speaker’s corner”, where everyone with an idea for a Continue reading