Vrnetlab: Emulate networks using KVM and Docker

Vrnetlab, or VR Network Lab, is an open-source network emulator that runs virtual routers using KVM and Docker. It supports developers and network engineers who use continuous-integration processes for testing network provisioning changes. Researchers and engineers may also use the vrnetlab command line interface to create and modify network emulation labs in an interactive way. In this post, I review vrnetlab’s main features and show how to use it to create a simple network emulation scenario using open-source routers.

Vrnetlab implementation

Vrnetlab users create Docker images for each type of router that will run in their network. They package the router’s disk image together with KVM software, Python scripts, and any other resources required by the router into the Docker image. Vrnetlab uses KVM to create and run VMs based on router software images, and uses Docker to manage the networking between the network nodes.

Virtual nodes

Vrnetlab users create Docker images that incorporate the router’s qemu disk image, along with software packages such as qemu-kvm, and the other resources needed by the router, such as a launch script and license files. The new Docker image represents a “virtual router” that comes with all the software and Continue reading

Feedback: Data Center Interconnects Webinar

I got great feedback about the first part of Data Center Interconnects webinar from one of ipSpace.net subscribers:

I had no specific expectation when I started watching the material and I must have watched it 6 times by now.

Your webinar covered just the right level of detail to educate myself or refresh my knowledge on the technologies and relevant options for today’s market choices

The information provided is powerful and avoids useless discussions which vendors and PowerPoint pitches. Once you ask the right question it’s easy to get an idea of the vendor readiness

In the first live session we covered the easy cases: design considerations, and layer-3 interconnect with path separation (multiple routing domains). The real fun will start in the second live session on March 19th when we’ll dive into stretched VLANs and long-distance vMotion ideas.

You can attend the live session with any paid ipSpace.net subscription – details here.

Fact or Fiction? With IoT It’s Not Always Clear

Recently, owners of expensive smart shoes found themselves at loose ends. Unable to pair the shoes to their smart phone app, they couldn’t tighten their self-lacing sneakers. It sounds like science fiction, but this really happened.

From dental sensors that can monitor what a person eats to kitty litters that can track a cat’s every movement, it can be difficult to sort fact from fiction when it comes to the Internet of Things (IoT). Can you tell which is real and which is not?

Fact or Fiction? The voice came from inside the Arizona man’s home – his home security camera to be exact. “You’ve never met me. I’m just a hacker.” Fortunately, it was a friendly hacker, alerting the household to a vulnerability in their home security system.

Fact: The hacker had a solution: turn on two-factor authentication. When using IoT devices, consumers can take this simple step, plus a few others, to help protect their privacy and security.

Fact or Fiction? A couple returned home to find that their carpet had been worn through by their overzealous Internet-connected vacuum cleaner. A hacker had programmed it to clean one square foot of their carpet for several Continue reading

Exploiting commutativity for practical fast replication

Exploiting commutativity for practical fast replication Park & Ousterhout, NSDI’19

I’m really impressed with this work. The authors give us a practical-to-implement enhancement to replication schemes (e.g., as used in primary-backup systems) that offers a signification performance boost. I’m expecting to see this picked up and rolled-out in real-world systems as word spreads. At a high level, CURP works by dividing execution into periods of commutative operation where ordering does not matter, punctuated by full syncs whenever commutativity would break.

The Consistent Unordered Replication Protocol (CURP) allows clients to replicate requests that have not yet been ordered, as long as they are commutative. This strategy allows most operations to complete in 1 RTT (the same as an unreplicated system).

When integrated with RAMCloud write latency was improved by ~2x, and write throughput by 4x. Which is impressive given that RAMCloud isn’t exactly hanging around in the first place! When integrated with Redis, CURP was able to add durability and consistency while keeping similar performance to non-durable Redis.

CURP can be easily applied to most existing systems using primary-backup replication. Changes required by CURP are not intrusive, and it works with any kind of backup mechanism (e.g., Continue reading

rbenv Install CentOS 7

rbenv is a utility for installing multiple ruby versions on a host machine. Using rbenv allows you to install ruby in a path you have ownership over so you can install gems without having to have sudo or root privileges. rbenv also allows you to target the exact ruby version in development...

Cumulus Networks is Excited to Announce being the First to Power Facebook’s Next Generation, Open Modular Platform, Minipack

Cumulus Networks, the leader in building open, modern and scalable networks, announced at OCP Summit that Cumulus Linux is the first network operating system to fully support the Minipack next-generation modular switch platform. Developed by Edgecore and contributed by Facebook to the Open Compute Project, Minipack empowers organizations of all sizes to architect, design and scale their infrastructure with unprecedented flexibility, capacity and interoperability.

Figure 1: Minipack Modular Chassis

Minipack is a modular switch platform, which means together, Cumulus Networks and Edgecore are bringing the benefits of web-scale networking to the mainstream. Minipack follows the open networking principles of disaggregation that allow customers to maintain consistent automated provisioning across all their switches of different form-factors (fixed or chassis).

Minipack leverages the latest ASIC technology from Broadcom including the Tomahawk III, the industry’s highest performance switch silicon. Compared to its predecessor, Backpack, Minipack is ½ the height, uses ½ the power and offers equivalent capacity making it one of the most operationally efficient open networking data center spine switches available today.

Additionally, Minipack offers either 100GE or 400GE options with Field Replaceable Port Interface Modules (PIM)’s in the following form factors:

Open Cloud Networking-Redefined

7368x4-JU-Blog

Networking vendors have long touted distinct routers and switches with different LAN/WAN interfaces for different customer use cases. After three decades of evolution, Ethernet now truly addresses all aspects of the present state and the next generation of networking, making it possible to support these previously separate use cases from a single common platform, which flexibly incorporates new capabilities in an open, standards-based approach. Arista, together with an ecosystem of partners including Broadcom and Cloud Titan customers, has a history of collaborating in many industry forums to define these new networking capabilities, including OCP, 25/50G and COBO, while driving next generation optics such as OSFP and QSFP-DD.

How did Facebook go down despite multiple data centers?

The Mercury retrograde kicked in big time on Wednesday as Facebook suffered an eight hour-outage that also affected Instagram and Facebook Messenger.No one was believed to be harmed; a few might have even had offline interactions with other human beings. Learn about backup and recovery: Backup vs. archive: Why it’s important to know the difference How to pick an off-site data-backup method Tape vs. disk storage: Why isn’t tape dead yet? The correct levels of backup save time, bandwidth, space Facebook said it wasn’t an attack, like a Denial of Service attack, and has since issued a statement attributing it to a configuration error.To read this article in full, please click here

How did Facebook go down despite multiple data centers?

The Mercury retrograde kicked in big time on Wednesday as Facebook suffered an eight hour-outage that also affected Instagram and Facebook Messenger.No one was believed to be harmed; a few might have even had offline interactions with other human beings. Learn about backup and recovery: Backup vs. archive: Why it’s important to know the difference How to pick an off-site data-backup method Tape vs. disk storage: Why isn’t tape dead yet? The correct levels of backup save time, bandwidth, space Facebook said it wasn’t an attack, like a Denial of Service attack, and has since issued a statement attributing it to a configuration error.To read this article in full, please click here

How did Facebook go down despite its several data centers?

The Mercury retrograde kicked in big time on Wednesday as Facebook suffered an eight-hour outage that also affected Instagram and Facebook Messenger.No one was believed to be harmed; a few might have even had offline interactions with other human beings. Learn about backup and recovery: Backup vs. archive: Why it’s important to know the difference How to pick an off-site data-backup method Tape vs. disk storage: Why isn’t tape dead yet? The correct levels of backup save time, bandwidth, space Facebook said it wasn’t attacked, such as via a denial-of-service attack, and has since issued a statement attributing the problem to a configuration error.To read this article in full, please click here

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