Big Switch Is Getting Bigger. Much Bigger.
Cool news today from BigSwitch who have taken some big steps forward with their rather awesome Big Cloud Fabric (BCF) solution.
Building on the existing features of BCF 2.0 that was announced last July (see my post on the BCF launch for more details), version 2.5 adds some pretty good new features and a surprise partner.
BCF 2.5 New Features
VMWare vCenter Support
BCF now supports VMWare vCenter. BigSwitch sees an Ethernet fabric as a complementary technology to VMWare’s NSX, not a competitor; very wisely they would like to be the underlay while NSX provides the overlay. The BCF controller integrates right into vCenter so that network configuration can be automated with the virtual environment, and the controller provides a single interface to the entire fabric.
CloudStack / OpenStack
The original BCF supported OpenStack. BCF 2.5 now has more elements of OpenStack (Juno) support and adds CloudStack support. With this and the vCenter integration, BCF has positioned itself quite nicely for full server and switch automation.
Brite Box Switching?
My first question when I heard about this was “What on earth is Brite Box switching?” It turns out that somebody somewhere coined the phrase Continue reading
Cisco Live 2015 – Time to get ready!
It is just about time to get ready for Cisco Live US this year and, harking back to 2012, we are again in San Diego, CA for the June 7-11th event. I just wanted to take a few moments and share some information that I have put together. Oh, if you have not registered yet – […]
The post Cisco Live 2015 – Time to get ready! appeared first on Fryguy's Blog.
News Analysis: Big Cloud Fabric 2.5 Released
Big Switch Networks has released version 2.5 of their Big Cloud Fabric SDN offering. Read the full press release here. What’s Big Cloud Fabric? BCF is an SDN-based IP fabric where you manage all of the individual switches as one “big switch.” In other words, you manage the fabric as a whole, and not individual switches. Big […]MPLS TE Design -Part 3
This is a continuation from Part 2 Fast Reroute Why Fast Reroute? Many NSP’s like ACME have traffic with tight SLAs. For instance below is an ITU delay recommendation for Voice. One Way Delay Characterization of Quality 0-150ms Acceptable for most applications 150-400ms May impact some applications Above 400ms Unacceptable ITU G.114 delay recommendations Having […]
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The post MPLS TE Design -Part 3 appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Diptanshu Singh.
MPLS TE Design -Part 2
This is a continuation from Part 1 Case for LDPoRSVP As we mentioned at the very beginning that ACME provides L3VPN and L2VPN services, which requires end to end LSP between the PEs. But due to scaling reasons, ACME decided not to extend RSVP to the edge routers. This creates a problem as there is […]
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The post MPLS TE Design -Part 2 appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Diptanshu Singh.
MPLS TE Design -Part 1
In this post we will be exploring different aspects of Traffic Engineering (RSVP-TE) from a design perspective using fictional ISP as a reference. The intent of the post is to not necessarily recommend a particular solution, but to bring up different aspects involved in the design. I am assuming that the reader already has somewhat […]
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The post MPLS TE Design -Part 1 appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Diptanshu Singh.
Is Controller-Based Networking More Reliable than Traditional Networking?
Listening to some SDN pundits one gets an impression that SDN brings peace to Earth, solves all networking problems and makes networking engineers obsolete.
Cynical jokes aside, and ignoring inevitable bugs, is controller-based networking really more reliable than what we do today?
Read more ...GNS3 1.2.X in the “Cloud” using CentOS 7.X
Hi Everyone, I thought I would go ahead and share some of my knowledge here with everyone. I'm not sure if anyone else has triedHow to stay ahead of threats to DNS servers
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.
Gartner predicts more than 30 billion devices will be connected by the Internet of Things (IoT) by 2020, and Domain Name System (DNS) servers are critical to keeping it all running. However, the number, frequency and variety of attacks on DNS servers is rising, putting businesses and initiatives like IoT at enormous risk. The good news is, there are steps you can take to mitigate these attacks.
The DNS system translates easily memorized domain names into the numerical IP addresses needed for locating computer services and devices worldwide. According to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), there are 30 to 50 million DNS servers on the planet. These servers are being hit by four main types of attacks: zero-day, cache poisoning, denial of service (DoS) and distributed denial of service (DDoS).
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Where to Start with SDN
For the 3rd and final installment on my SDN series, this post builds on A Business Case for SDN, and the SDN Ecosystem, theNoction Intelligent Routing Platform (IRP) – What is it?
I was contacted by some people at Noction and asked if I was interested in writing about their platform, the Intelligent Routing Platform (IRP). Since it’s a product that uses Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), it peaked my interest. First let’s make the following things clear:
- I am not being paid to write this blog post
- My opinions can’t be bought
- I will only write about a product if it’s something that interests me
BGP is the glue of the Internet (with DNS) and what keeps everything running. BGP is a well designed and scalable protocol which has been around for a long time. It has grown from carrying a few hundred routes to half a million routes. However, there will always be use cases where BGP might not fit your business model.
In Noction’s white paper they define the following as the network’s major challenges:
- Meeting the customer’s demand for 100% uptime
- Facing the low latency requirement
- Achieving reliable data transmission
- Avoiding network congestion and blackouts
- Achieving consistency of throughput
- Keeping bandwidth usage below predefined commit levels
- Reducing the cost and time of network troubleshooting
The product is designed for multihomed networks running BGP. You can’t optimize network flows if Continue reading
How to transition from customer understanding to customer action
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.
Many companies focus on using cheaper, faster data warehouses to organize their accumulated customer data for business intelligence. But in order to remain competitive, businesses need to be using customer data to build applications that make real-time, data-driven decisions.
If you can interpret each attribute, event and transaction as a hint to help make the best predictions and decisions for your customers, you can transition from just customer understanding to customer action. But acting upon data to optimize customer experiences requires an architecture different from traditional data warehousing and business intelligence applications.
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Its a new year!
My apology. I have been very absent here as of late.
I have been doing some different stuff, which is irrelevant here, but rest assured, i got some posts lined up. The next one on Unified MPLS. I think you will like it, so stay tuned! 
Happy New Year!
PCI DSS 3.0 went into effect Jan. 1. Are you in compliance?
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.
The new Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard 3.0 (PCI DSS 3.0) that became mandatory January 1 contains significant changes that will require some businesses to do heavier lifting than they did in years past, and many may not realize it.
Certain e-commerce merchants who re-direct their customers to third parties for payment card data collection and third party service providers who remotely manage merchant systems and networks now face a bevy of technical controls that they have never dealt with before.
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More Bang For Your Budget With Whitebox
As whitebox switching starts coming to the forefront of the next buying cycle for enterprises, decision makers are naturally wondering about the advantages of buying cheaper hardware. Is a whitebox switch going to provide more value for me than buying something from an established vendor? Where are the real savings? Is whitebox really for me? One of the answers to this puzzle comes not from the savings in whitebox purchases, but the capability inherent in rapid deployment.
Ten Thousand Spoons
When users are looking at the acquisition cost advantages of buying whitebox switches, they typically don’t see what they would like to see. Ridiculously cheap hardware isn’t the norm. Instead, you see a switch that can be bought for a decent discount. That does take into account that most vendors will give substantial one-time discounts to customers to entice them into more lucrative options like advanced support or professional services.
The purchasing advantage of whitebox doesn’t just come from reduced costs. It comes from additional unit purchases. Purchasing budgets don’t typically spell out that you are allowed to buy ten switches and three firewalls. They more often state that you are allowed to spend a certain dollar amount on devices Continue reading
PQ Show 44 – The OPNFV Project with Margaret Chiosi
Margaret Chiosi, president of the OPNFV project hosted at the Linux Foundation, discusses OPNFV in a briefing with Ethan Banks.
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The post PQ Show 44 – The OPNFV Project with Margaret Chiosi appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Ethan Banks.
Video: IPv6 High Availability Components
Last spring I ran an IPv6 High Availability webinar which started (not surprisingly) with a simple question: “which network components affect availability in IPv6 world, and how is a dual-stack or an IPv6-only environment different from what we had in the IPv4 world?”
This part of the webinar is now available on ipSpace.net content web site. Enjoy the video, explore other IPv6 resources on ipSpace net, and if you’re from Europe don’t forget to register for the IPv6 Security Summit @ Troppers in mid-March.
VIRL – A slow greatness
I had a migration project from 6500 to ASRs. I have decided to check out VIRL.My migration setup requires 14 routers and a test server. Reading the system requirements for such a setup made me decide not to install on my laptop.
I went ahead and installed it on a not so small ESX server: A new UCS machine (24 cores, 380G memory, running 4 VMs, including VIRL), ESX 5.1.
I have allocated VIRL 4vCPU, 16GB memory.
The installation was not that short, but not that hard either. After the installation was over, I installed VM Maestro and started building my lab. Working with VM Maestro, which is VIRL's GUI, was really easy. The only annoying thing was my inability to set the interface numbers for the connections between routers.
Here is how my final setup looks like:
The setup is running 12 vIOS, 2 CSR1K, and one Ubuntu server, from where I ran my automated tests.
I pressed on "Start simulation" and then when trouble started. It took about 40 minutes for all the routers to load. Then the CLI felt like 2400 baud. It was crawling!
Notice that each time you start Continue reading