Hello 2015!
Hard to be believe 2014 is gone and and 2015 is here! Yea I know we are already a few days into 2015 but hey for some reason I still hear people saying “Happy New Year”, much like I still Christmas decorations out. So what’s in store in for 2015!? Well we are going to […]
PQ Show 40 – HP Networking – Multi Service Routers (HP MSR)
This is a continuation of the sponsored series of shows we recorded at the HP Discover Barcelona conference in December 2014. An interesting facet of HP Discover to me was meeting smart HP folks at random. Sue Darte is such a person I was lucky enough to bump into. Here’s the story. While waiting to record a […]
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The post PQ Show 40 – HP Networking – Multi Service Routers (HP MSR) appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Ethan Banks.
OpenFlow integration
The article describes the challenge of mapping between the different methods used by sFlow and OpenFlow to identify switch ports:
- Agent IP address ⟷ OpenFlow switch ID
- SNMP ifIndex ⟷ OpenFlow port ID
The Open vSwitch recently implemented the extension, unifying visibility and control of the virtual network edge. In addition, most physical that support OpenFlow also support sFlow. Ask vendors about their plans to implement the sFlow OpenFlow Structures extension since it is a key enabler for SDN control applications.
A Look Ahead to Packet Pushers Content in 2015
Here’s an update on some Packet Pushers news, and a look ahead to the content we’re planning for 2015. No scary announcements, just some thoughts to share. Circling Back Around On Show 200 I think we’ve mentioned it before, but the response we received to show 200 was very encouraging to us. That’s understated. You really blew […]
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The post A Look Ahead to Packet Pushers Content in 2015 appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Ethan Banks.
Internet Connectivity via Linux Host
-Intro - This post will serve as a step by step tutorial for setting up a GNS3 network with an internet connection with the host system isThe Innovators of Computer Networking (Infographic)
Originally published on the Auvik blog The history of computer networking reaches back surprisingly far. As early as the 1790s, intrepidContinuous Integration Pipeline for Networking
Popular development methodologies like Continuous Integration are usually accompanied by some kind of automated workflow, where a developer checks in some source code, which kicks off automated review, testing, and deployment jobs. I believe the same workflows can be adopted by network engineers.
Let’s say you are the Senior Network Engineer for your entire company, which boasts a huge network. You don’t have time to touch every device, so you have a team of junior-level network engineers that help you out. Let’s say you want to offload the creation/deletion of DHCP reservations to these junior engineers, but you still want to be able to approve all changes, just as a last line of defense, and a sanity check.
For this, I’m gong to show you how I’m managing my own home DHCP server (ISC) with Gerrit, Jenkins, and Ansible.
Config Review and Versioning with Git and Gerrit
I mentioned in a previous post that version control is an important component of efficiently managing network infrastructure. I’m going to take it a step further than what most are doing with RANCID, which is traditionally used at the end of a Continue reading
On Losing
When I got off the phone, I knew I’d blown it. I’d gotten so wrapped up in the discussion on eVPNs that I might have crossed over that magical line between, “this is a really neat technology,” to, “this technology will solve world hunger.” It brought back to mind my first “real fight” in the world of technology, a long ago argument between two network operating systems (Novell Netware and Banyan Vines).
At the time, I was a buck sergeant in the USAF assigned to the Small Computer Support Office. We were building a new base backbone, and trying to decide what network operating system to standardize on as an organization (as a base). The decision had come down to two options — Novell Netware and Banyan Vines. I was in the camp that wanted Vines. In fact, I’d written two papers (long’ish, on the order of 80 pages each), going through the positives and negatives in each direction. I’d been to a number of meetings, and we had small networks set up running both in our lab. In the end, though, I lost. The technology I was advocating for wasn’t chosen by “the powers that be,” and so Continue reading
BGPSEC: Signatures and Performance
BGPSEC is a set of BGP extensions being developed by the SIDR working group of the IETF to improve the security of the Internet’s routing infrastructure. So far in this series, we’ve looked at the basic operation of BGPSEC, the protections offered, and then the first set of performance issues — how do we prevent […]
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The post BGPSEC: Signatures and Performance appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Russ White.
BGP Deaggregation with Conditional Route Injection
Whenever there’s a weird request to do something totally illogical with BGP, there’s a knob in Cisco IOS to get it done (and increase the heartburn of CCIE candidates). Conditional Route Injection (the ability to insert more specific prefixes into BGP without having them in the IP routing table) is one of them.
Keep in mind: being a MacGyver is not a long-term strategy. Just because you can doesn’t mean that you should.
Read more ...Software-Defined Cloud Networking Reflections
Every year I reflect upon how my predictions compare to actual outcomes. Once again, that time has come, so let’s take a walk together down 2014’s memory lane, while also looking forward to exciting industry developments in 2015. Clearly innovation in networking is returning as we are seeing venture capitalists once again investing in networking innovation!
Prediction #1: The rise in server virtualization is driving network virtualization deployments.
Evaluation #1: Half True.
One can transcend network boundaries at both L2 and L3, building seamless virtual and physical networks with VXLAN as the key L2 over L3 foundation. The VXLAN specification co-authored by Arista and VMware, and in a similar vein the NVGRE specification co-authored by Arista and Microsoft, were key turning points for network virtualization. Arista’s strategic partnership announced in August 2014 with VMware (NSX, vSphere and vCloud Director) and multivendor interoperability with other controllers from Nuage Networks, OpenStack and the OpenFlow community were key milestones in 2014. New protocols take time to be adopted – usually 3-5 years. VXLAN is at that tipping point for broader implementations in place of the proprietary, vendor-specific options we have seen.
Prediction #2: “SDN” is no more “Still Don’t Know”.
Evaluation #2: Continue reading
Continuous Integration Pipeline for Networking
Popular development methodologies like Continuous Integration are usually accompanied by some kind of automated workflow, where a developer checks in some source code, which kicks off automated review, testing, and deployment jobs. I believe the same workflows can be adopted by network engineers. Let’s say you are the Senior Network Engineer for your entire company, which boasts a huge network. You don’t have time to touch every device, so you have a team of junior-level network engineers that help you out.Continuous Integration Pipeline for Networking
Popular development methodologies like Continuous Integration are usually accompanied by some kind of automated workflow, where a developer checks in some source code, which kicks off automated review, testing, and deployment jobs. I believe the same workflows can be adopted by network engineers. Let’s say you are the Senior Network Engineer for your entire company, which boasts a huge network. You don’t have time to touch every device, so you have a team of junior-level network engineers that help you out.Docker Orchestration
This blog is part of my ongoing series on Docker containers. Orchestrating Containers is a pretty complex task and there is a lot of work ongoing to solve this particular problem. There are big companies, startups as well as Opensource projects involved with this work. There are many different technologies and projects ongoing that got … Continue reading Docker Orchestration
13 reasons why your newsletter sucks
Newsletters are a crucial tool of online marketing; get yours right and your audience will pay attention to you and whatever you’re trying to promote. Get it wrong and if you’re lucky people will just route your newsletter straight to the trash. If you really goof up, you’ll be swamped with abuse and unsubscribe requests. So, to help keep you on the path of digital righteousness here's a selection of the best ways for you to screw up your newsletter:
#1. Be boring. This is the simplest path to a failed newsletter. To really be boring ensure that your newsletter is in plain text, short, minimally formatted, and contains absolutely no graphics.
To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Hybrid OpenFlow ECMP testbed
SDN fabric controller for commodity data center switches describes how the real-time visibility and hybrid control capabilities of commodity data center switches can be used to automatically adapt the network to changing traffic patterns and optimize performance. The article identifies hybrid OpenFlow as a critical component of the solution, allowing SDN to be combined with proven distributed routing protocols (e.g. BGP, ISIS, OSPF, etc) to deliver scaleable, production ready solutions that fully leverage the capabilities of commodity hardware.
This article will take the example of large flow marking that has been demonstrated using physical switches and show how Mininet can be used to emulate hybrid control of data center networks and deliver realistic results.
Show 219 – Open vSwitch Obtains Ludicrous Speed
Ben Pfaff, Justin Pettit, and Ethan Jackson are core contributors to the Open vSwitch (OVS) project. What’s OVS? OVS is a virtual switch that’s growing in popularity as an open source vSwitch. The more you dig into open source networking projects, the more you see OVS showing up. One of the OVS gotchas in the past has […]
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The post Show 219 – Open vSwitch Obtains Ludicrous Speed appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Ethan Banks.