Extreme-ly Interesting Times In Networking
If you’re a fan of Extreme Networks, the last few months have been pretty exciting for you. Just yesterday, it was announced that Extreme is buying the data center networking business of Brocade for $55 million once the Broadcom acquisition happens. Combined with the $100 million acquisition of Avaya’s campus networking portfolio on March 7th and the purchase of Zebra Wireless (nee Motorola) last September, Extreme is pushing itself into the market as a major player. How is that going to impact the landscape?
Building A Better Business
Extreme has been a player in the wireless space for a while. Their acquisition of Enterasys helped vault them into the mix with other big wireless players. Now, the rounding out of the portfolio helps them complete across the board. They aren’t just limited to playing with stadium wifi and campus technologies now. The campus networking story that was brought in through Avaya was a must to help them compete with Aruba, A Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company. Aruba owns the assets of HPE’s campus networking business and has been leveraging them effectively.
The data center play was an interesting one to say the least. I’ve mused recently that Brocade’s data center business Continue reading
Verizon Goes Nationwide With LTE CAT-M IoT Network
The network is built on a virtualized cloud environment.
Network Device Authentication with Ansible 2.3
In a recent post, Coming Soon: Networking Features in Ansible 2.3, one of the key features to be introduced is a new connection framework. This new connection framework supports persistent SSH connections for modules that communicate with network devices via two methods:
1) the tried and true CLI method
2) the newly included NETCONF method
With the new connection framework, the network modules are currently undergoing a transformation with regards to how credentials are supplied. In Ansible versions 2.0 to 2.2, network modules support providing connection credentials as top-level arguments in the module.
If you want to build a task using the ios_command Ansible module the credentials used to authenticate to the device could be provided as top level arguments. The following example demonstrates the simplest form of passing credentials to modules in order to authenticate to the remote device:
ios_command:
commands: show version
host: “{{ inventory_hostname }}”
username: cisco
password: cisco
In some cases, such as with configuration modules, additional authentication details are required. In order to enter configuration mode, the Playbook tasks must first enter “enable” mode and, in some cases, supply an enable-mode password. Notice the additional two arguments (authorize and auth_pass) added to Continue reading
PQ Show 109: A Look Inside DMEVPN
On today s Priority Queue, we explore DMEVPN, a open-source technology for multipoint EVPN tunnels. By using DMEVPN, network engineers can extend layer-2 tunnels across an IP network. The post PQ Show 109: A Look Inside DMEVPN appeared first on Packet Pushers.The granular control over Layer 2 in today’s smart switches might surprise net veterans
This vendor-written tech primer has been edited by Network World to eliminate product promotion, but readers should note it will likely favor the submitter’s approach.
In the gap between plug and play unmanaged Ethernet switches and fully managed enterprise switches, vendors added the so called “smart switch,” which offer light management features to unmanaged gigabit Ethernet devices. Today, smart switches targeted at small-to-medium-size business run the gamut in terms of manageability and feature sets.
The appeal of basic network management features for a small business stems from the need for performance and security. Plug and play and start right away—that’s what every start up wants—then later on, they need basic configurations and features to accommodate growth as needed.
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