ONF Releases Atrium to Drive SDN Adoption
A fully open-source SDN distribution gets introduced by the ONF.
VIRL versus Junosphere
I’ve been using Junosphere a lot recently, and it’s a great tool – quick and easy creation of topologies without the need to go to a physical lab to try things out. Takes the guesswork out of a lot of things, which is a real bonus. There are obviously a few things you can’t do in a virtual environment that would be possible in a real one (e.g. QoS, MTU greater than 2000 bytes, MS-MIC in an MX), but it caters for 80% of what you need.
I always thought that it put Juniper leagues ahead of Cisco because you can buy credits to use the system right on the front page. Cisco were late to the party with something called VIRL – Virtual Internet Routing Lab. They were late, but rumour had it that a lot of developers moved from Juniper to Cisco to bring VIRL about. However Junosphere always had the edge for the networking student (as we all remain, whether we are JNCIE or not) because of its accessibility – with VIRL you had to be a Cisco customer and gain access through your account manager. I’ll stick with GNS3 thanks!
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VIRL versus Junosphere
I’ve been using Junosphere a lot recently, and it’s a great tool – quick and easy creation of topologies without the need to go to a physical lab to try things out. Takes the guesswork out of a lot of things, which is a real bonus. There are obviously a few things you can’t do in a virtual environment that would be possible in a real one (e.g. QoS, MTU greater than 2000 bytes, MS-MIC in an MX), but it caters for 80% of what you need.
I always thought that it put Juniper leagues ahead of Cisco because you can buy credits to use the system right on the front page. Cisco were late to the party with something called VIRL – Virtual Internet Routing Lab. They were late, but rumour had it that a lot of developers moved from Juniper to Cisco to bring VIRL about. However Junosphere always had the edge for the networking student (as we all remain, whether we are JNCIE or not) because of its accessibility – with VIRL you had to be a Cisco customer and gain access through your account manager. I’ll stick with GNS3 thanks!
That appears Continue reading
Aruba and HP – The Ecosystem Is King
Note: This is part of a multi-post series I am writing that compares Aruba to HP and how the integration of Aruba Networks into HP might play out. You can read my intro post here.
I am a HUGE fan of vendor ecosystems. A HUGE fan. I have written about them before. The last post I wrote on them can be found here. I really do think they are the key to driving a vendor’s success. One could argue that the large vendors have it easy. They have the resources to build those ecosystems. They can spend money that the smaller vendors cannot and can essentially buy loyalty from customers and partners. Of course, at some point, those large vendors were small ones. They did something different to propel them to the large vendor status. Their competition fell by the wayside and either drifted off into obsolescence, or just outright died.
Sorry. There is no TL/DR for this post. Buckle up. It’s a long one.
So let’s get a lay of the land when it comes to ecosystems between HP and Aruba. Let me clear about one thing. This is specific to wireless. This has nothing to do with the Continue reading
Running quagga docker container with GNS3
Here is a step by step example on how to run the FOSS Quagga in a container to use with GNS3 topologies. In a container, quagga is runningPublished: Designing Scalable Web Applications
The first batch of the latest materials for my Designing Scalable Web Applications course have been published on my free content web site.
The basics – MTU, MSS, GRE, and PMTU
One of the truly fascinating things about networking is how much of it ‘just works’. There are so many low level pieces of a network stack that you don’t really have to know (although you should) to be an expert at something like OSPF, BGP, or any other higher level networking protocol. One of the ones that often gets overlooked is MTU (Maximum Transmission Unit), MSS (Maximum Segment Size) and all of the funs tuff that comes along with it. So let’s start with the basics…
Here’s your average looking IP packet encapsulated in an Ethernet Header. For the sake of conversation, I’ll assume going forward that we are referring to TCP only but I did put the UDP header length in there just for reference. So a standard IP packet is 1500 bytes long. There’s 20 bytes for the IP header, 20 bytes for the TCP header, leaving 1460 bytes for the data payload. This does not include the 18 bytes of Ethernet headersFCS that surround the IP packet.
When we look at this frame layout, we can further categorize components of the frame by MTU and MSS…
The MTU is defined Continue reading
BRKARC-2032 — Designing for Secure Convergence of Enterprise and PCNs
Presenter: Chuck Stickney, Cisco SE
Handful of OT folks in the room; majority IT.
Convergence Benefits
- Simplification (common protocols)
- Reduced Cost
- Pervasive enablement of features and services