Archive

Category Archives for "Networking"

Understanding Data Center Fabrics 07: Link State Protocol In The Underlay – Video

Episode seven continues a discussion of fabric underlays by looking at the use of link-state protocols instead of BGP. Network architect and author Russ White covers: -Which link state protocol (IS-IS or OSPF) to choose -Russ’s reasons for preferring IS-IS -IS-IS efficiencies for packet formats and autoconfiguration -Resource recommendations for learning IS-IS -Scale and flooding […]

The post Understanding Data Center Fabrics 07: Link State Protocol In The Underlay – Video appeared first on Packet Pushers.

VPP Configuration – Part1

VPP

About this series

I use VPP - Vector Packet Processor - extensively at IPng Networks. Earlier this year, the VPP community merged the Linux Control Plane plugin. I wrote about its deployment to both regular servers like the Supermicro routers that run on our AS8298, as well as virtual machines running in KVM/Qemu.

Now that I’ve been running VPP in production for about half a year, I can’t help but notice one specific drawback: VPP is a programmable dataplane, and by design it does not include any configuration or controlplane management stack. It’s meant to be integrated into a full stack by operators. For end-users, this unfortunately means that typing on the CLI won’t persist any configuration, and if VPP is restarted, it will not pick up where it left off. There’s one developer convenience in the form of the exec command-line (and startup.conf!) option, which will read a file and apply the contents to the CLI line by line. However, if any typo is made in the file, processing immediately stops. It’s meant as a convenience for VPP developers, and is certainly not a useful configuration method for all but the simplest topologies.

Luckily, VPP comes Continue reading

Continuing – Bird Project and Extensions

I will keep this post very short, In order to fuel and make the model sustain, https://r2079.wordpress.com/2022/03/18/capturing-bird-photos/, I have thought about including a solar panel and powering the system with a Lithium Ion battery.

I have installed the system and it’s been working fine, I understood I was very bad at Soldering.

  • TP4056 -> This takes energy from solar panel and feeds to Li Battery.
  • Solar Panel -> I have a small panel which fits on the hosting box
  • Lithium Ion Batteries and charger (4x2500mAH)

I hope this runs continuously using solar power.

-Rakesh

Understanding Data Center Fabrics 06: BGP Underlay – Video

The sixth video in this series examines the underlay component of a data center fabric, touches on a theoretical discussion of network layers, and reviews the use of BGP as your underlay protocol. Russ White covers: -The notion of abstractions in a network and how they limit failure domains -Tradeoffs among surface, state, and optimization […]

The post Understanding Data Center Fabrics 06: BGP Underlay – Video appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Nvidia announces server ‘superchips,’ with and without GPUs

At its GPU technology conference (GTC) last year, Nvidia announced it would come out with its own server chip called Grace based on the Arm Neoverse v9 server architecture. At the time, details were scant, but this week Nvidia revealed the details, and they are remarkable.With Grace, customers have two options, both dubbed superchips by Nvidia. The first is the Grace Hopper Superchip that was formally introduced last year, but only broadly described. It consists of a 72-core CPU, and a Hopper H100 GPU tightly connected by Nvidia’s new high-speed NVLink-C2C chip-to-chip interconnect, which has 900GB/s of transfer speed.To read this article in full, please click here

Nvidia announces server ‘superchips,’ with and without GPUs

At its GPU technology conference (GTC) last year, Nvidia announced it would come out with its own server chip called Grace based on the Arm Neoverse v9 server architecture. At the time, details were scant, but this week Nvidia revealed the details, and they are remarkable.With Grace, customers have two options, both dubbed superchips by Nvidia. The first is the Grace Hopper Superchip that was formally introduced last year, but only broadly described. It consists of a 72-core CPU, and a Hopper H100 GPU tightly connected by Nvidia’s new high-speed NVLink-C2C chip-to-chip interconnect, which has 900GB/s of transfer speed.To read this article in full, please click here

SQLModel For Network Engineers

Introduction I published a blog introducing relational databases for network engineers (linked below and here) on Packet Pushers. I would highly encourage readers unfamiliar with SQL and databases in general to take a look at that post before moving on. In this post we will focus on SQLModel and interacting with databases using the python […]

The post SQLModel For Network Engineers appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Nvidia introduces Spectrum-4 platform for AI, HPC over Ethernet

Nvidia is known for its GPUs, but has introduced Spectrum-4, a combination of networking technologies that reinforces its commitment not only to graphics processors, but also to systems designed to handle the demanding network workloads of AI and high-performance computing.The latest Nvidia Spectrum products rely on the new Spectrum-4 Ethernet-switch ASIC that boasts 51.2 Tb/s switching and routing capacity. The chip underpins the latest members of the company’s Spectrum switches, which are available later this year. The switches are part of a larger Spectrum-4 platform that integrates Nvidia’s ConnectX-7 smartNIC, its new BlueField-3 DPU, and its DOCA software-development platform.To read this article in full, please click here

Nvidia introduces Spectrum-4 platform for AI, HPC over Ethernet

Nvidia is known for its GPUs, but has introduced Spectrum-4, a combination of networking technologies that reinforces its commitment not only to graphics processors, but also to systems designed to handle the demanding network workloads of AI and high-performance computing.The latest Nvidia Spectrum products rely on the new Spectrum-4 Ethernet-switch ASIC that boasts 51.2 Tb/s switching and routing capacity. The chip underpins the latest members of the company’s Spectrum switches, which are available later this year. The switches are part of a larger Spectrum-4 platform that integrates Nvidia’s ConnectX-7 smartNIC, its new BlueField-3 DPU, and its DOCA software-development platform.To read this article in full, please click here

A Modest Proposal for Cisco Interface Naming

If you’re going to be configuring an interface in a switch, which one are you going to use? The interface has a name and a number based on where it is on the device. The numbering part is fairly easy to figure out. The module number comes first, followed by the slot, and finally the port. In the world of Cisco, which is the one I’m the most familiar with, that means a fixed configuration switch usually has interfaces labeled 0/24, with no module and the slot almost always being zero. With a modular switch the interface would be labeled 2/0/28 to indicate the 28th port on the second line card.

The issue arises when you factor in the first part of the interface naming convention. The nomenclature used in the Cisco world since the beginning of time has been the interface speed. If your interface is a 100Mbit Ethernet interface then the interface name is FastEthernet0/48. If you’re using a 1Gbit interface it’s GigabitEthernet0/48. If it’s a 10Gbit interface it becomes TenGigabitEthernet0/48. It’s a progression of interface speeds. Even if the port is capable of using 10/100/1000 the port is referred to at the highest speed. The 10Gbit ports Continue reading

Heavy Networking 623: Growing From Junior To Senior Engineer

Today's Heavy Networking is a roundtable conversation about career growth. Maybe your title is junior engineer, but you want to be a senior engineer. Be careful what you wish for! Maybe your title is junior but you feel you’re doing the job of a senior. Are you really? How would you justify this to your manager? We address these and other questions and issues including certs vs. experience, paying dues, the importance of communication skills, and more.

The post Heavy Networking 623: Growing From Junior To Senior Engineer appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Heavy Networking 623: Growing From Junior To Senior Engineer

Today's Heavy Networking is a roundtable conversation about career growth. Maybe your title is junior engineer, but you want to be a senior engineer. Be careful what you wish for! Maybe your title is junior but you feel you’re doing the job of a senior. Are you really? How would you justify this to your manager? We address these and other questions and issues including certs vs. experience, paying dues, the importance of communication skills, and more.

Chile takes the crown for fastest broadband in the OECD

A recent study by the UK-based price comparison site Uswitch has found that Chile boasts the fastest average broadband internet connection across the 37 member countries of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), followed by Denmark and the United States.At 189.36Mbps, the average Chilean broadband connection can download a 1,500MB movie in just over a minute – that’s about 100Mbps faster than the average connection across the OECD, and seven times faster than the slowest country, which was Turkey, clocking in at 26.34Mbps.The second- and third-slowest average broadband connections belonged to Greece and Mexico, at 33.41Mbps and 38.77Mbps, respectively. Denmark’s 163.60Mbps and the United States’ 143.76Mbps were good for second and third places at the top end, as mentioned.To read this article in full, please click here