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.
Manually calculating MST digests
Switches sharing an MST region must agree on three things:- The region name
- The region revision level
- The region's mapping of VLANs to STP instances
The first two are exchanged directly inside BPDUs, so they are easy to validate. The third item is about 6KB of data at a minimum. It doesn't fit in a BPDU.
Rather than exchange the table directly, MST switches calculate a 128-bit hash of the table and exchange that instead. If the hashes match, the VLAN-to-stp-instance mapping database is assumed to match.
Most platforms will show you the calculated digest.
Catalyst:
lab-catalyst#show spanning-tree mst configuration
Name [lab]
Revision 3 Instances configured 4
Instance Vlans mapped
-------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------
0 4-9,40-99,101-199,201-299,301-4094
1 1,10-19,100
2 2,20-29,200
3 3,30-39,300
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
lab-catalyst#show spanning-tree mst configuration digest
Name [lab]
Revision 3 Instances configured 4
Digest 0x37D94E0098E3418C046F217A71077FB1
Pre-std Digest 0xFC2190275BBB19CD9A6F1BB116DB10E7
lab-catalyst#
Procurve:
lab-procurve# show spanning-tree mst-config
MST Configuration Identifier Information
MST Configuration Name : different
MST Configuration Revision : 4
MST Configuration Digest : 0x37D94E0098E3418C046F217A71077FB1
IST Mapped VLANs : 4-9,40-99,101-199,201-299,301-4094
Instance ID Mapped VLANs
----------- ---------------------------------------------------------
1 1,10-19,100
2 2,20-29,200
3 3,30-39,300
lab-procurve#
Because their VLAN-to-instance mapping is the same, both switches arrived at the same digest value. Note that Continue reading
My Network Toolkit
A while back, Chris Marget of Fragmentation Needed posted a run-down of his comprehensive and extremely clever network toolkit. Because I'm something of a weight weenie, mine is a lot more slimmed down. I thought I'd post it here:
The contents:
- Two random USB drives (in case I need to leave one with somebody).
- Single-mode and multi-mode LC fiber loopback plugs.
- Rack PDU plug adapter.
- Awesome PicQuic compact screwdriver (thanks to Chris's post).
- T1 loopback plug (red) (because we still have T1s out here in the boonies).
- Cat-6 pass-through plug (white).
- Crossover adapter (orange).
- Sharpie.
- Console setup:
- USB-to-DB9 adapter.
- DB9-to-RJ45 adapter.
- Flat Cat-6 cable.
- Rollover adapter.
- Velcro tie
- Flat Cat-6 cable with velcro tie.
The Fenix AA light and Leatherman Skeletool CX almost always live in a pocket rather than the kit and go with me everywhere. The kit all fits into a small zippered case that used to hold a Dell laptop power supply.
My main goal here was to have all the hard-to-find professional stuff in Continue reading
My Network Toolkit
A while back, Chris Marget of Fragmentation Needed posted a run-down of his comprehensive and extremely clever network toolkit. Because I'm something of a weight weenie, mine is a lot more slimmed down. I thought I'd post it here:The contents:
- Two random USB drives (in case I need to leave one with somebody).
- Single-mode and multi-mode LC fiber loopback plugs.
- Rack PDU plug adapter.
- Awesome PicQuic compact screwdriver (thanks to Chris's post).
- T1 loopback plug (red) (because we still have T1s out here in the boonies).
- Cat-6 pass-through plug (white).
- Crossover adapter (orange).
- Sharpie.
- Console setup:
- USB-to-DB9 adapter.
- DB9-to-RJ45 adapter.
- Flat Cat-6 cable.
- Rollover adapter.
- Velcro tie
- Flat Cat-6 cable with velcro tie.
The Fenix AA light and Leatherman Skeletool CX almost always live in a pocket rather than the kit and go with me everywhere. The kit all fits into a small zippered case that used to hold a Dell laptop power supply.
My main goal here was to have all the hard-to-find professional stuff in Continue reading
Friday News Analysis: “Size Matters” Tech Podcast for SMB’s Launching
I noticed a tweet about a new tech podcast that will be starting soon focused on the SMB space. I used to consult for SMBs, and I know the needs to be unique. SMBs often have many of the same technical needs of large organizations, but lack the scale requirements. Technology purchases are expensive, and business […]Using the Junos Space REST API
Automation is going to be fundamental in all networking products. I’ve been working a lot on integrating Juniper products in existing and standard software. There are many different ways to automate something on a network running Junos. Using REST (or RESTful) APIs is one way of doing this. The reason I’m using REST is that it’s fairly easy to understand, but the best thing is that a large amount of existing products supports REST to integrate with it.
The goal of this blog is to explain how Junos products support REST, compatibility with older versions and how it scales.
What is REST?
REST (REpresentational State Transfer) is a simple stateless architecture that generally runs over HTTP. There are 4 commonly supported commands. When you issue a command your input data consists of a URL, HTTP headers and a body holding the data.
HTTP Headers are used for things like Authentication and a Content Type to let the application know what data format the body will contain.
The URL specifies which data you want to receive from the application or you want to change.
The body is empty in a request for data, when you want to change some data this Continue reading
Networking FAQ 1: Breaking into the Field
This post is the first in a series I plan to publish over the next few months regarding frequently asked questions in networking. Each post will cover a different subject, roughly following the outline I shared last summer. I hope people find this useful!
- What kind of networking jobs are there?
- What are the different networking specialties?
- How do I get into networking?
- Do I need a college degree to be a networker?
- Do I need certifications?
- Do I need to know a programming language?
- What should I list on my resume?
- How much do networkers make?
- How do I find a job?
- Do you have any interview tips?
- What are the negative aspects of networking?
The Most Important Skill to learn for 2015
Original content from Roger's CCIE Blog Tracking the journey towards getting the ultimate Cisco Certification. The Routing & Switching Lab Exam
In this ever advancing world of technology there has never been a better time to be able to get things done anywhere, but there has also never been so many distractions stopping you getting things done. With the constant connectivity to the internet, facebook, twitter, etc etc we are now absorbing more information every hour... [Read More]
Post taken from CCIE Blog
Original post The Most Important Skill to learn for 2015
A Bright And Happy 2015 Ahead
Welcome to a new year finally divisible by five! This is a year devoid of extra February days, Olympics, or anything else. It’s a chance for us to take a look at technology and make things better and easier for users and IT staff. It’s also probably going to be called the year of VDI, NFV, and SDN. Again.
Rather than writing a wrap up post for the end of 2014 like so many other sites, I like to look at what I said I was going to do 365 days ago and see if I followed through on them. It’s a way to keep myself honest and also to see how the year transformed around me and my goals.
Looking at 2014
Thankfully, my goals for 2014 were modest. I wanted to get more involved with the people in the IT industry. And I did that in a big way. I went to a ton of conferences and events through the year. Cisco Live, VMworld, and HP Discover Barcelona were all on my list this year, as well as all of the Tech Field Day events I took part in as an organizer. It was a grand Continue reading
Docker Networking – Part2
This blog is part of my Docker series. This is a continuation from my previous blog on Docker Networking. In this blog, I will cover current Docker networking limitations, Pipework overview and a sample Docker application where I have linked containers in 2 different hosts. There are 4 networking options that Docker provides when creating … Continue reading Docker Networking – Part2
Using IPv6 to Defeat Multi-tenancy Separation
I’ve always advised my clients to carefully plan the implementation of IPv6. The protocol opens new attack vectors on which ne’er-do-wells can assault your infrastructure. There are countless examples I’ve seen such as service providers locking down access to routers using IPv4 transport but leaving IPv6 transport completely open. About a year ago, I stumbled […]
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The post Using IPv6 to Defeat Multi-tenancy Separation appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Jeff Loughridge.
Community Show – The Rash Came Back After 19 Hours
While Packet Pushers were covering the Barcelona HP Discover conference and we got together with some of the folks attending the event on the show floor. The result is non-coherent discussion about whatever topics each person wanted to raise and discuss.
Author information
The post Community Show – The Rash Came Back After 19 Hours appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Greg Ferro.
Community Show – The Rash Came Back After 19 Hours
While Packet Pushers were covering the Barcelona HP Discover conference and we got together with some of the folks attending the event on the show floor. The result is non-coherent discussion about whatever topics each person wanted to raise and discuss.
The post Community Show – The Rash Came Back After 19 Hours appeared first on Packet Pushers.
CloudFlare in 2014: Bigger, Faster, Securer
At the end of 2013 we posted a blog article titled 2013: Rebuild the Engine; 2014: Step on the Gas which explained how in 2013 we had been rebuilding the engine that powers CloudFlare and how we expected 2014 to be when we stepped on the gas.
In that blog post, we said that we'd be expanding our network to betters serve customers in China and Latin America (as well as continuing other global expansions), and that we'd be making a big announcement around SSL.
CC BY-ND 2.0 image by Do Hyun-Kim
Looking back at 2014, we did a whole lot more and many of those changes had a meaningful impact well beyond CloudFlare. Now when we make a change, the needles on the Internet's dials move: when we roll out support for new protocols, sites tracking those protocols see a sudden jump in usage.
Here's a month by month review of CloudFlare's 2014:
January 8: keeping our promise to Latin America, we opened our first data center there in Chile.
January 27: we published our first transparency report covering National Security Orders on the first day it became legal to discuss them.
February 13: we Continue reading