Tech Bytes: Advania Chooses Apstra For Data Center Operations (Sponsored)
Today on the Tech Bytes podcast, sponsored by Juniper, we talk with a customer of Juniper’s Apstra intent-based networking data center software. IT solutions provider Advania uses Apstra internally to operate its own data centers, as well as for customer engagements.
The post Tech Bytes: Advania Chooses Apstra For Data Center Operations (Sponsored) appeared first on Packet Pushers.
Tech Bytes: Advania Chooses Apstra For Data Center Operations (Sponsored)
Today on the Tech Bytes podcast, sponsored by Juniper, we talk with a customer of Juniper’s Apstra intent-based networking data center software. IT solutions provider Advania uses Apstra internally to operate its own data centers, as well as for customer engagements.Sunburst
docker run -p 8008:8008 -p 6343:6343/udp sflow/prometheusThe pre-built sflow/prometheus Docker image packages sFlow-RT with the applications for exploring real-time sFlow analytics. Run the command above, configure network devices to send sFlow to the application on UDP port 6343 (the default sFlow port) and connect with a web browser to port 8008 to access the user interface.
The chart at the top of this article demonstrates the visibility that sFlow can provide into nested protocol stacks that result from network virtualization. For example, the most deeply nested set of protocols shown in the chart is:
- eth: Ethernet
- q: IEEE 802.1Q VLAN
- trill: Transparent Interconnection of Lots of Links (TRILL)
- eth: Ethernet
- q: IEEE 802.1Q VLAN
- ip: Internet Protocol (IP) version 4
- udp: User Datagram Protocol (UDP)
- vxlan: Virtual eXtensible Local Area Network (VXLAN)
- eth: Ethernet
- ip Internet Protocol (IP) version 4
- esp IPsec Encapsulating Continue reading
VXLAN: Virtualizing Data Center Networks for the Cloud Era
This blog reviews what VXLAN is, why it was developed, how it is being used in data centers, and advantages over other virtualization technologies.
The post VXLAN: Virtualizing Data Center Networks for the Cloud Era appeared first on Pluribus Networks.
VXLAN: Virtualizing Data Center Networks for the Cloud Era
Since VXLAN was introduced in 2014 it has become an important component of modern data center network fabrics. This blog reviews what VXLAN is, why it was developed, how it is being used in data centers, and advantages over other virtualization technologies. In an upcoming blog, we will look at some innovative VXLAN applications outside the data center.
What is VXLAN?
Virtual eXtensible Local Area Network (VXLAN) is an Internet standard protocol that provides a means of encapsulating Ethernet (Layer 2) frames over an IP (Layer 3) network, a concept often referred to as “tunneling.” This allows devices and applications to communicate across a large physical network as if they were located on the same Ethernet Layer 2 network.
Tunneling approaches such as VXLAN provide an important tool to virtualize the physical network, often called the “underlay,” and allow for connectivity to be defined and managed as a set of virtual connections, called the “overlay.” These virtual connections can be created, modified and removed as needed without any change to the physical underlay network. (Mike Capuano’s blog, What to Know About Data Center Overlay Networks, provides a deeper dive on overlays.)
While VXLAN is only one Continue reading
Network Break 357: Switchless Networking? Startup Rockport Says Yes; ISPs Monetize Customer Surveillance
Take a Network Break! This week we discuss how startup Rockport Networks brings switchless networking to the data center. The FTC says ISPs are amassing and monetizing sensitive customer data. Cisco unveils new routing silicon, Juniper sees revenues rise and income fall, and more tech news.
The post Network Break 357: Switchless Networking? Startup Rockport Says Yes; ISPs Monetize Customer Surveillance appeared first on Packet Pushers.
Network Break 357: Switchless Networking? Startup Rockport Says Yes; ISPs Monetize Customer Surveillance
Take a Network Break! This week we discuss how startup Rockport Networks brings switchless networking to the data center. The FTC says ISPs are amassing and monetizing sensitive customer data. Cisco unveils new routing silicon, Juniper sees revenues rise and income fall, and more tech news.LEO Satellite Broadband: Top Considerations for Enterprise IT
The low-earth orbit satellite (LEO) space race is underway and warrants watching and continued evaluation.Sudan: seven days without Internet access (and counting)
It's not every day that there is no Internet access in an entire country. In the case of Sudan, it has been five days without Internet after political turmoil that started last Monday, October 25, 2021 (as we described).
The outage continues with almost a flat line and just a trickle of Internet traffic from Sudan. Cloudflare Radar shows that the Internet in Sudan is still almost completely cut off.
There was a blip of traffic on Tuesday at ~14:00 UTC, for about one hour, but it flattened out again, and it continues like that — anyone can track the evolution on the Sudan page of Cloudflare Radar.
Internet shutdowns are not that rare
Internet disruptions, including shutdowns and social media restrictions, are common occurrences in some countries and Sudan is one where this happens more frequently than most countries according to Human Rights Watch. In our June blog, we talked about Sudan when the country decided to shut down the Internet to prevent cheating in exams, but there were situations in the past more similar to this days-long shutdown — something that usually happens when there’s political unrest.
The country's longest recorded network disruption was back in Continue reading
netsim-tools Release 1.0
It looks like netsim-tools reached a somewhat stable state, so it was time to do a cleanup and publish release 1.0 (also available on PyPi, use pip3 install –upgrade netsim-tools to fetch it).
During the cleanup, I removed all references to the obsolete scripts, leaving only the netlab command. I also found an old bash script that enabled LLDP passthrough on Linux bridges and made it part of netlab up process; your libvirt-based labs will have LLDP enabled by default.
Interested? Install the tools and follow the tutorials to get started.
Python Script Pulling AWS IP Prefixes – Part 2
In the previous post I described some of the design considerations for this script and what modules I use. In this post, we will look at using YAML to collect data and use it in Python in the form of a dictionary. Why YAML? YAML is commonly used as a readable way of storing configuration data and there are modules for Python to read that data.
The YAML file is a very basic one containing these mappings:
--- outside_interface: outside aws_service: s3 aws_region: eu-north-1 asa_ip: 192.168.255.241 ...
The three dashes indicate the start of the file and the three dots indicate the end of the file. We have configured what service we are interested in (S3) and in what region (eu-north-1). The outside interface in our Cisco ASA is named outside.
The natural fit to work with mappings in Python is a dictionary. We need to get the data from the file named aws_prefix.yml into a dictionary. To do that, we will use the following code:
def get_yaml_data() -> dict:
"""Gets the interface name, ASA IP address AWS service, and region
from the YAML file and returns a dictionary"""
try:
with open("aws_prefix.yml") Continue reading
Worth Reading: Operators and the IETF
Long long time ago (seven years to be precise), ISOC naively tried to bridge the gap between network operators and Internet Vendor Engineering Task Force1. They started with a widespread survey asking operators why they’re hesitant to participate in IETF mailing lists and meetings.
The result: Operators and the IETF draft that never moved beyond -00 version. A quick glimpse into the Potential Challenges will tell you why IETF preferred to kill the messenger (and why I published this blog post on Halloween).
Automation 3. Configuring of Nokia SROS via NETCONF/YANG with pySROS and Python
Hello my friend,
we continue the review and tutorial of pySROS, the Nokia Python library to manage the Nokia SR OS based routers via NETCONF/YANG. In previous blogposts we’ve covered how to poll the configuration and operational data and how to structure the received data and explore its YANG modules. Today we’ll take a look how to configure Nokia SR OS based devices.
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retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic, mechanical or photocopying, recording,
or otherwise, for commercial purposes without the
prior permission of the author.
I Have Software Developers in My Company. Why Should I Do Automation?
This is one of the trickiest questions, which doesn’t have a simple answer. Really, why should you, network or security engineer, bother yourself and step into completely new and unknown world of automation and development? The reason for that very simple: network and security automation (and infrastructure automation in general) requires detailed knowledge of the network and security infrastructure first of all. We always say at our trainings: automation is automation of your knowledge and skills. So
On top of that, Continue reading
Worth Reading: Programming Sucks
Just FYI: if you’re wondering about the wisdom of every networking engineer should become a programmer religion, you might benefit from the Programming Sucks reality check. I had just enough exposure to programming to realize how spot-on it is (and couldn’t decide whether to laugh or cry).
Calico is celebrating 5 years
October marks the five-year anniversary of Calico Open Source, the most widely adopted solution for container networking and security. Calico Open Source was born out of Project Calico, an open-source project with an active development and user community, and has grown to power 1.5M+ nodes daily across 166 countries.
When Calico was introduced 5 years ago, the world—and technology—was much different from what it is today. The march toward distributed applications and microservices had just begun. Today, open-source projects like Project Calico are enabling the large-scale adoption of a modern architecture that is ultimately responsible for the wholesale transition to digital transformations that we are witnessing.
As part of our celebration, we’ve compiled a few comments from people who have worked on the project over the years.
“Calico works well out of the box. It scales well, rarely has bugs, and is feature rich. Tigera does a good job supporting its customers also.” —Network engineer“[Calico is] the industry standard [for] networking for Kubernetes.” —Platform engineer“The support for a lot of K8s distributions (either on-prem or cloud managed) is great with Calico.” —Platform architect“[Calico helped us learn] about network segmentation in cloud-native environments.” Continue reading