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Category Archives for "Networking"

Do We Need Chassis Switches Anymore in the DC?

While Cisco Live this year was far more about the campus than the DC, Cisco did announce the Cisco Nexus 9364C, a spine-oriented switch which can run in both ACI mode and NX-OS mode. And it is a monster.

It’s (64) ports of 100 Gigabit. It’s from a single SoC (the Cisco S6400 SoC).

It provides 6.4 Tbps in 2RU, likely running below 700 watts (probably a lot less). I mean, holy shit.

9364c

Cisco Nexus 9364C: (64) ports of 100 Gigabit Ethernet.

And Cisco isn’t the only vendor with an upcoming 64 port 100 gigabit switch in a 2RU form factor. Broadcom’s Tomahawk II, successor to their 25/100 Gigabit datacenter SoC, also sports the ability to have (64) 100 Gigabit interfaces. I would expect the usual suspects to announce switches based on these soon (Arista, Cisco Nexus 3K, Juniper, etc.)

And another vendor Innovium, while far less established, is claiming to have a chip in the works that can do (128) 100 Gigabit interfaces. On a single SoC.

For modern data center fabric, which rely on leaf/spine Clos style topologies, do we even need chassis anymore?

For a while we’ve been reliant upon the Sith-rule on Continue reading

23% off FitBit Aria WiFi Smart Scale – Deal Alert

Fitbit's Aria WiFi smart scale is a great add-on for anyone using a Fitbit to track progress towards their fitness goals. The current 23% discount shaves a solid $30 off its regular $129.95 list price, so you can buy it now on Amazon for $99.95 (see this item on Amazon). The Fitbit Aria will accurately track weight, % body fat, and Body Mass Index (BMI) for up to 8 users. Using WiFi, data is automatically uploaded to your Fitbit account, so you can graph and track your progress easily and privately online. The product averages 3.5 out of 5 stars from over 6,200 people on Amazon (see reviews). Click over to Amazon for more information and to review buying options for the discounted Fitbit Aria smart scale.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Worth Reading: Why data integration is on the front line

Data is increasingly viewed as a strategic asset with real revenue impact for businesses of every size. A 2016 Capgemini survey found 61% of executives surveyed felt big data was a driver of revenue and was as valuable to their bottom line as the products or services they sell. Additionally, 65% of the surveyed executives felt they risked becoming irrelevant or uncompetitive if they failed to embrace big data. —Data Center Journal

The post Worth Reading: Why data integration is on the front line appeared first on rule 11 reader.

IDG Contributor Network: What companies need to know about interconnection to succeed at digital business

What is interconnection, and why does it matter?Interconnection is the deployment of IT traffic exchange points that integrate direct, private connections between counterparties. Interconnection is best achieved hosted in carrier-neutral data center campuses, where distributed IT components are collocated. In an age when reams of information race around the world with the click of a finger and massive transactions routinely occur several times faster than the blink of an eye, interconnection powers digital business.Interconnection is much more than successfully connecting Point A to Point B. Telephone wires pulled off that kind of simple connectivity ages ago. Today’s enterprise-grade interconnection has some key characteristics that can help take digital business to the next level:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: What companies need to know about interconnection to succeed at digital business

What is interconnection, and why does it matter?Interconnection is the deployment of IT traffic exchange points that integrate direct, private connections between counterparties. Interconnection is best achieved hosted in carrier-neutral data center campuses, where distributed IT components are collocated. In an age when reams of information race around the world with the click of a finger and massive transactions routinely occur several times faster than the blink of an eye, interconnection powers digital business.Interconnection is much more than successfully connecting Point A to Point B. Telephone wires pulled off that kind of simple connectivity ages ago. Today’s enterprise-grade interconnection has some key characteristics that can help take digital business to the next level:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: What companies need to know about interconnection to succeed at digital business

What is interconnection, and why does it matter?Interconnection is the deployment of IT traffic exchange points that integrate direct, private connections between counterparties. Interconnection is best achieved hosted in carrier-neutral data center campuses, where distributed IT components are collocated. In an age when reams of information race around the world with the click of a finger and massive transactions routinely occur several times faster than the blink of an eye, interconnection powers digital business.Interconnection is much more than successfully connecting Point A to Point B. Telephone wires pulled off that kind of simple connectivity ages ago. Today’s enterprise-grade interconnection has some key characteristics that can help take digital business to the next level:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Housing developer builds resiliency with DRaaS

When Steve Werner joined Milhaus, the company was gearing up for a growth spurt that took it from roughly 80 employees in 2015 to more than 270 employees today. Upgrading the company’s IT infrastructure was a priority for Werner, who is the first director of technology at the Indianapolis-based company, which designs, builds and manages luxury apartments in urban areas.“They went from a very small business to a pretty good sized business in a short amount of time. But we were still running on small business hardware, with a small business backup plan,” Werner says. The company’s IT gear was running in an old server closet with no air conditioning. “It couldn’t handle all that we were adding to it,” Werner says. “Everything was about to melt down.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Unix’s mysterious && and ||

The Unix shell’s && and || operators provide some very useful functionality, but they can be a bit mysterious, especially considering the number of options for how they are used.The most common use of these Boolean operators is in the construction of multi-conditional tests—when you want two or more conditions to be true (or any in a set of operators to be true) before some command is run. The && serves as a logical AND (requiring all conditions to be true) operation, while the || provides a logical OR (requiring only one to be true).Combining tests In the script below, we’re using && to combine two very simple conditions. We won’t get output unless both conditions are true. This particular script runs through the tests twice, but only to demonstrate the two “flavors” of the brackets that can be used. Note that && doesn’t work inside square brackets unless they’re doubled.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Submarine Cable Basics

Submarine Cable is probably the most important topic for the International traffic. More than 99% of the International traffic , including data, voice and video is carried over Submarine Cables.   But still submarine cables is not very well known topic among the network engineers, especially if you are not working in the Service Provider, […]

The post Submarine Cable Basics appeared first on Cisco Network Design and Architecture | CCDE Bootcamp | orhanergun.net.

IDG Contributor Network: Update on Spectrum: Billing systems scheduled to be merged

Back in May 2016 when Charter officially closed the deal to acquire Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks, they took on a monumental task of merging many different systems to make one cohesive customer experience. (As a disclaimer, my company does sell and manage Spectrum Enterprise services.)This deal was worth over $60 billion and effects over 90,000 employees and 25 million customers with significant coverage in 48 states. Among old school telecom pros, the move to snag Tom Rutledge from Cablevision in late 2012 and relocating the headquarters to Tom’s backyard in Connecticut was a sign of big things to come.As it stands today, Spectrum does not have an online payment option for enterprise services that allows you to view your bill or even your bill amount. Bright House did have a platform but it was recently taken down after performing some maintenance, pointing customers to the Spectrum Business billing log in.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Worth Reading: A brittle and fragile future

While this is not intended to be a dystopian rant, I feel strongly motivated to draw attention to the fragile and interdependent future we are creating through the use of programmable devices and systems. Some of you are, no doubt, rather tired of this theme, but as we equip cyber-physical and virtual systems with programs that animate their functions, it seems inescapable that over time they will become increasingly interdependent and that may produce vulnerabilities and fragilities that will be exploited by inimical parties or will simply create difficult and even unrecoverable failures. —ACM Queue

The post Worth Reading: A brittle and fragile future appeared first on rule 11 reader.

IDG Contributor Network: 3 leading indicator Software-as-a-Service metrics to understand where your business is heading

We all know the flagship metrics by which Software-as-a-Service businesses are gauged — Customer Acquisition Cost, Customer Lifetime Value, churn and the like. Understanding these metrics is key to measuring the health and value of a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) business, and if you’re the operator of a SaaS company, you should have a deep understanding of what each of these metrics means, how to measure them for your business and whether your metrics are healthy or indicate potential issues.Every company is different, but a combination of common knowledge and some business-specific reasoning should give you a sense of whether your SaaS metrics jive with where you want your business to head.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

BGP FlowSpec on white box switch

BGP FlowSpec is a method of distributing access control lists (ACLs) using the BGP protocol. Distributed denial of service (DDoS) mitigation is an important use case for the technology, allowing a targeted network to push filters to their upstream provider to selectively remove the attack traffic.

Unfortunately, FlowSpec is currently only available on high end routing devices and so experimenting with the technology is expensive. Looking for an alternative, Cumulus Linux is an open Linux platform that allows users to install Linux packages and develop their own software.

This article describes a proof of concept implementation of basic FlowSpec functionality using ExaBGP installed on a free Cumulus VX virtual machine.  The same solution can be run on inexpensive commodity white box hardware to deliver terabit traffic filtering in a production network.

First, install latest version of ExaBGP on the Cumulus Linux switch: 
curl -L https://github.com/Exa-Networks/exabgp/archive/4.0.0.tar.gz | tar zx
Now define the handler, acl.py, that will convert BGP FlowSpec updates into standard Linux netfilter/iptables entries used by Cumulus Linux to specify hardware ACLs (see Netfilter - ACLs): 
#!/usr/bin/python
 
import json
import re
from os import listdir,remove
from os.path import isfile
from  Continue reading
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