I spent the first ten years of my career in mobile telecoms. I learned a ton of lessons and I really enjoyed it, but I’ve always been drawn to networking. However I wasn’t getting hands-on exposure to data networks in my telco job so I had to teach myself. In 2002 I began the transition […]
The post Networking Learning Paths – Route/Switch or Speciality Knowledge? appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by John Harrington.
At Cisco Live in Orlando I had the chance to demo the Virtual Internet Routing Lab (VIRL). It is Cisco’s answer to GNS3 or Junipers’ Junosphere using virtualization to create virtual network topologies. This tools will be as revolutionary as GNS3, but at a much larger scale. It is an awesome tool that can be used for certification studying but also to validate production designs. Everyone I spoke to couldn’t wait to get their hands on it, including me!
Below is a screen shot of VIRL. It is using Oracles VMMaestro GUI based on Java. In the screen you can see network topology which is drop and drag. On the left side in purple there is a list of all saved networks. The right middle side has a list of supported devices. Top right side has all of the currently running devices and bottom right preconfiguration tabs. To access CLI of these routers, you has to run in simulation mode then Telnet to individual devices. The preconfiguration is a nice feature that allows you preconfigure IP addresses, Loopback interfaces or routing protocols like OSPF or BGP.
VIRL supports virtualizing Cisco’s modified operations system. Cisco Continue reading
“Say I’m convinced that my company should choose one technology over another. How can I tell the whole truth, cover all the bases, explain all the alternatives, while making certain I make the case that the technology I’ve made, or would like to make, is the right one?” In case you’ve ever wondered what it’s […]
The post How do I Justify this? appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Russ White.
If you were unable to access LinkedIn for almost the entire day earlier this week, then you can take solace in the fact that you were not the only one, not able to. Almost half the world shared your misery where all attempts to access LinkedIn (and several other websites) went awry. This purportedly happened because a bunch of hackers decided to poison the DNS entries for LinkedIn and some other well known websites (fidelity.com being another).
Before we delve into the sordid details of this particular incident lets quickly take a look at how DNS works.
Whenever we access linkedin.com, our computer must resolve this human-readable address “linkedin.com” into a computer-readable IP address like “216.52.242.86″ thats hosting this website. It does this by requesting a DNS server to return an IP address that can be used. The DNS server responds with one or more IP addresses with which you can reach linkedin.com. Your computer then connects to that IP address.
So where is this DNS server located that i just spoke about?
This DNS server lies with your Internet service provider, which caches information from other DNS servers. The router that we have at home also Continue reading
New voices gather in the Packet Pushers virtual boardroom for a discussion of Cisco’s layer 2 extension technology, Overlay Transport Virtualization (OTV). Ethan Banks hosts a recording of about two hours worth of content about OTV; this show is the second hour (well, almost another hour). Joining Ethan are first-time guests Jamie Caesar, Colby Glass and Ken Matlock. Jamie, Colby and Ken have […]
The post PQ Show 25 – Cisco OTV Deep Dive Part 2 appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Ethan Banks.
As almost everyone in the networking community knows, next week is Cisco Live in Orlando, Florida. And as just about well…everyone knows, Orlando is the home of Disney World, a.k.a. the Land of Make Believe.
There are some that would have you believe that the software-defined networking (SDN) market is the land of make believe as well – lots of buzz words, catchy messaging and pretty PowerPoint slides. Embrane and our customers have a different view.
It’s a view we can’t wait to talk about next week. We have a lot to share with the show attendees. There’s a lot of synergy between Embrane and Cisco. Whether attendees want to talk about running applications on UCS or moving traffic through their data center or cloud environment with Nexus switches, we add a tremendous amount of value to those environments with our software-defined network services.
Speaking of UCS. Because I like a good Main Street, USA fireworks show as much as the blinking lights on a piece of hardware, I’m really looking forward to powering up the Cisco UCS chassis we are going to have in the booth. Then, just a few seconds after that spinning up software-defined firewalls Continue reading
Next week, the Packet Pushers are sponsored by Cisco to take the mobile recording studio to Cisco Live US (CLUS) in Orlando. We’ve been planning a lot of shows around what is the biggest IT conference of the year for those of us in the networking industry. The inimitable Mr. Ferro has posted some thoughts […]
The post Packet Pushers – Planned Shows & TweetUps at Cisco Live US 2013 appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Ethan Banks.
Company Will Launch its "Do You Know Everything?" Campaign on the World of Solutions Exhibit Floor
Packet Design, the leading provider of IP network route analytics software, announced a new marketing campaign today at the 2013 Cisco Live Conference in Orlando, Florida.
Packet Design will introduce some levity to the serious world of IP networking by challenging visitors to its booth on their Knetwork Knowledge℠. Packet Design routing experts will test attendees on their expertise in IGP and BGP routing protocols, MPLS WANs, Layer 2 and 3 VPNs and RSVP-TE tunnels. Attendees will leave not only with a higher level of Knetwork Knowledge but also a tee shirt that gives them bragging rights. In addition, they will understand how Packet Design’s Explorer™ family of products:
“IP networking is complex and sometimes the people responsible for ensuring the availability and performance of critical networks Continue reading
I received the following question today from Ralph Droms. I include an edited version of my response to Ralph.
On Thu, Jun 20, 2013 at 9:45 AM, Ralph Droms (rdroms) <rdroms@yyy.zzz> wrote:
Someone suggested to me that bufferbloat might even be worse in switches/bridges than in routers. True fact? If so, can you point me at any published supporting data? Thanks, Ralph
It is hard to quantify as to whether switches or routers are “worse”, and I’ve never tried, nor seen any published systematic data. I
wouldn’t believe such data if I saw it, anyway. What matters is whether you have unmanaged buffers before a bottleneck link.
I don’t have first hand information (to just point you at particular product specs; I tend not to try to find out whom is particularly guilty as it can only get me in hot water if I compare particular vendors). I’ve generally dug into the technology to understand how/why buffering is present to understand what I’ve seen.
You can go look at specs of switches yourself and figure out switches have problems from first principles.
Feel free to write a paper!
Here’s what I do know.
Over the years IT professionals have sat through countless presentations, conference calls, and keynotes. We’ve been preached too, explained “the problem”, and forced to bear witness to the the future. During such events all of us have had to step up and explain that we already understand the problem, we know who your company is, and we really just want to know how your product works.
Outside of the normal annoyances, there are several words or phrases that invoke pain and disgust in our hearts, one such phrase came up today. While I won’t mention the source, or berate them anymore than they already have been. I do want to put this list out there for future reference… If I’ve forgotten something that drives you crazy, please, feel free to contact me so I can add it here.
I spent the day yesterday at GigaOM’s Structure conference in San Francisco trying to see what my colleagues around the technology world are up to these days. If you have haven’t been to Structure, it’s always a good event – well organized, lots of 20-minute discussions and plenty of networking opportunities. There were definitely interesting nuggets shared from a variety of speakers at the show.
For example, I loved it when Ben Haines, formerly of Pabst Brewing, said he worked for “The Department of No.” I’m probably going to “borrow” that because it’s the reason Embrane is trying to help IT, and particularly the networking team. As I wrote in a recent blog post, Don't Hate the Players Hate the Tools, IT and the networking team need to have the tools at their disposal so they have to stop saying no to requests that require immediate action because they can’t react fast enough.
Then there was the CIO from Clorox, Ralph Loura, who said he’s constantly trying to make IT agile. As he said, his goal is to help IT enable business productivity. He gets it! He knows that if he doesn’t, the business units will go off Continue reading
How does the internet work - We know what is networking
UPDATE on 2.11.2013 – There will be an update in February 2014! Read all about the new announcement in the latest article here! with all new topics added and removed from CCIE lab exam v5. UPDATE on 23.07.2013 – There will be not update this year to v5 at least not for now… […]
Dear all, I am happy to announce new version of phpipam IP address management – version 0.8. Quite some bugs have been squashed and some new features introduced, like per-group permissions, support for translations, visual subnet displays and other:
You can demo it here: http://demo.phpipam.net/
You can download it on sourceforge site: phpipam-0.8.
Please note that IE8 is no longer supported!
Special thanks to all the people submitting bug reports, donors, translators and feature testers!
Screenshots:
Full changelog for this release is:
New features:
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+ New group and permission management;
+ Support for translations;
+ Subnet resizing;
+ Subnet splitting into smaller subnets;
+ Added free space display for nested subnets;
+ Added visual display of subnet usage per IP address;
+ Added truncate network option that deletes all IP addresses in subnet;
+ Added button the updates subnet with RIPE information;
Enhancements:
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+ Continue reading
I may not be the most “travelled” person in the world, but over the past couple of years I have managed to find myself in several places across Asia, the Pacific Islands and also the US. One thing has always stood out – Speaking the same language is the hardest part of travelling! Now when I travel to parts of Asia and Im dealing either in hand gestures or with somebody trying their very best speak English (Their English is 1000x better than my Cantonese or my Khmer), and we both make allowances for the difficulty of not speaking the same language.
Sadly, when I travel to the United States and we both attempt to speak “English” nobody can ever seem to understand me. Sometimes its my accent, and other times its the colloquialisms I am using that do not translate effectively, and I am treated by blank stares on the other person trying their hardest not to say “Huh?”.
I’ve learned to deal with this by talking slower and thinking carefully about the words I use to ensure that they dont have some local significance. Anybody who has met me in person knows that I talk loudly, quickly Continue reading
Well it has been just over 7 weeks now since I failed my first attempt at the CCIE Lab Exam in Routing & Switching in Brussels. On the way home on the Eurostar I had vowed to take the weekend off and get straight back on the horse and start labbing again for 4 hours […]
The post CCIE Lab Exam attempt #2 – How I’m going to study better! appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Roger Perkin.