netlab 1.7.0: Lab Validation, Fabrics, BGP Nerd Knobs

It’s been a while since the last netlab release. Most of that time was spent refactoring stuff that you don’t care about, but you might like these features:

As always, we also improved the platform support:

netlab 1.7.0: Lab Validation, Fabrics, BGP Nerd Knobs

It’s been a while since the last netlab release. Most of that time was spent refactoring stuff that you don’t care about, but you might like these features:

As always, we also improved the platform support:

The Bespoke Supercomputing Architecture That Stood the Test of Time

In the history of computing, there has been an endless push and pull between the need for general-purpose versus fine-tuned custom systems and software.

The post The Bespoke Supercomputing Architecture That Stood the Test of Time first appeared on The Next Platform.

The Bespoke Supercomputing Architecture That Stood the Test of Time was written by Nicole Hemsoth Prickett at The Next Platform.

Tech Bytes: Pliant Combines APIs, Low Code Approach For Network Automation (Sponsored)

Network automation takes a variety of forms, from individual scripts that handle specific tasks, to workflows that have to be orchestrated across multiple devices and systems. Today on the Tech Bytes podcast we talk with sponsor Pliant about its automation platform. Pliant helps you orchestrate across devices and domains with a low-code approach that uses... Read more »

Tech Bytes: Pliant Combines APIs, Low Code Approach For Network Automation (Sponsored)

Today on the Tech Bytes podcast we talk with sponsor Pliant about its automation platform. Pliant helps you orchestrate across devices and domains with a low-code approach that uses APIs to automate and orchestrate across your infrastructure.

The post Tech Bytes: Pliant Combines APIs, Low Code Approach For Network Automation (Sponsored) appeared first on Packet Pushers.

How AWS Can Undercut Nvidia With Homegrown AI Compute Engines

Amazon Web Services may not be the first of the hyperscalers and cloud builders to create its own custom compute engines, but it has been hot on the heels of Google, which started using its homegrown TPU accelerators for AI workloads in 2015.

The post How AWS Can Undercut Nvidia With Homegrown AI Compute Engines first appeared on The Next Platform.

How AWS Can Undercut Nvidia With Homegrown AI Compute Engines was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

NB458: Broadcom Debuts On-Chip Neural Net, Lays Off VMware Staff; Okta Breach Gets Worse

Broadcom’s latest Trident ASIC will include a neural net inference engine on the chip that can analyze traffic  and take action in the packet pipeline, but it’s up to customers to build rules and signatures based on their own training data. Broadcom has also announced it will lay off approximately 1,300 VMware employees. Identity provider... Read more »

Routing Through the Forest of Trees

Some friends shared a Reddit post the other day that made me both shake my head and ponder the state of the networking industry. Here is the locked post for your viewing pleasure. It was locked because the comments were going to devolve into a mess eventually. The person making the comment seems to be honest and sincere in their approach to “layer 3 going away”. The post generated a lot of amusement from the networking side of IT about how this person doesn’t understand the basics but I think there’s a deeper issue going on.

Trails To Nowhere

Our visibility of the state of the network below the application interface is very general in today’s world. That’s because things “just work” to borrow an overused phrase. Aside from the occasional troubleshooting exercise to find out why packets destined for Azure or AWS are failing along the way when is the last time you had to get really creative in finding a routing issue in someone else’s equipment? We spend more time now trying to figure out how to make our own networks operate efficiently and less time worrying about what happens to the packets when they leave our organization. Continue reading

Upcoming Pearson Class: Modern Network Troubleshooting

On the 26th of January, I’ll be teaching a webinar over at Safari Books Online (subscription service) called Modern Network Troubleshooting. From the blurb:

The first section of this class considers the nature of resilience, and how design tradeoffs result in different levels of resilience. The class then moves into a theoretical understanding of failures, how network resilience is measured, and how the Mean Time to Repair (MTTR) relates to human and machine-driven factors. One of these factors is the unintended consequences arising from abstractions, covered in the next section of the class.
The class then moves into troubleshooting proper, examining the half-split formal troubleshooting method and how it can be combined with more intuitive methods. This section also examines how network models can be used to guide the troubleshooting process. The class then covers two examples of troubleshooting reachability problems in a small network, and considers using ChaptGPT and other LLMs in the troubleshooting process. A third, more complex example is then covered in a data center fabric.

Register here.

The BGP Origin Attribute

Kristijan Taskovski asked an interesting question related to my BGP AS-prepending lab:

I’ve never personally done this on the net but….wouldn’t the BGP origin code also work with moving one’s ingress traffic similarly to AS PATH?

TL&DR: Sort of, but not exactly. Also, just because you can climb up ropes using shoelaces instead of jumars doesn’t mean you should.

Let’s deal with the moving traffic bit first.

The BGP Origin Attribute

Kristijan Taskovski asked an interesting question related to my BGP AS-prepending lab:

I’ve never personally done this on the net but….wouldn’t the BGP origin code also work with moving one’s ingress traffic similarly to AS PATH?

TL&DR: Sort of, but not exactly. Also, just because you can climb up ropes using shoelaces instead of jumars doesn’t mean you should.

Let’s deal with the moving traffic bit first.