Painless Progress with My Ubiquiti Upgrade

I’m not a wireless engineer by trade. I don’t have a lab of access points that I’m using to test the latest and greatest solutions. I leave that to my friends. I fall more in the camp of having a working wireless network that meets my needs and keeps my family from yelling at me when the network is down.

Ubiquitous Usage

For the last five years my house has been running on Ubiquiti gear. You may recall I did a review back in 2018 after having it up and running for a few months. Since then I’ve had no issues. In fact, the only problem I had was not with the gear but with the machine I installed the controller software on. Turns out hard disk drives do eventually go bad and I needed to replace it and get everything up and running again. Which was my intention when it went down sometime in 2021. Of course, life being what it is I deprioritized the recovery of the system. I realized after more than a year that my wireless network hadn’t hiccuped once. Sure, I couldn’t make any changes to it but the joy of having a stable environment Continue reading

HS062: Questions On Being Service-Oriented

Johna and Greg discuss service-oriented networking and the challenges of defining and delivering network services. They explore the negative impact of siloed organizational structures on service delivery and the importance of continuous adaptation in infrastructure management. They debate the perception of services by users, using metaphors like sidewalks and electricity, and the importance of defining... Read more »

Urban mobility transformation enhances the “Fast” but removes the “Furious”

Commissioned: After two years of collective confinement, the world’s population rushed outdoors with a passion. …

The post Urban mobility transformation enhances the “Fast” but removes the “Furious” first appeared on The Next Platform.

Urban mobility transformation enhances the “Fast” but removes the “Furious” was written by Martin Courtney at The Next Platform.

D2C228: Building Local Tech Communities

While it’s easy to find technical content and make professional connections online, in-person interactions are still valuable for learning, forging business and personal connections, and career development. On today’s Day Two Cloud we discuss how and why to build local tech communities. Guest Laura Santamaria is a developer, developer advocate, and longtime community builder. We... Read more »

Why hyperscale networks have been decades in the making

SPONSORED FEATURE: The next generation internet is all about experience. Hyperscalers like Google, Azure and Facebook epitomize the importance of both technological and customer experience. …

The post Why hyperscale networks have been decades in the making first appeared on The Next Platform.

Why hyperscale networks have been decades in the making was written by Martin Courtney at The Next Platform.

Registration No Longer Needed to Download Free PDFs

I published dozens of free-to-download slide decks on ipSpace.net. Downloading them required the free ipSpace.net subscription which is no longer available because I refuse to play a whack-a-mole game with spammers.

You might like the workaround I had to implement to keep those PDFs accessible: they are no longer behind a regwall.

You can find the list of all the free content ipSpace.net content here. The Conferences and Presentations page is another source of links to public presentations.

Registration No Longer Needed to Download Free PDFs

I published dozens of free-to-download slide decks on ipSpace.net. Downloading them required the free ipSpace.net subscription which is no longer available because I refuse to play a whack-a-mole game with spammers.

You might like the workaround I had to implement to keep those PDFs accessible: they are no longer behind a regwall.

You can find the list of all the free content ipSpace.net content here. The Conferences and Presentations page is another source of links to public presentations.

HW018: Building a Successful Wi-Fi Consulting Business

Wi-Fi consultant Rowell Dionicio shares his experiences and insights on building a successful consulting practice. He discusses the importance of niche specialization, creating educational content, and using his podcast and blog as marketing tools. Rowell highlights the need for continuous learning, effective communication, and networking. He also addresses the business side of consulting, including handling... Read more »

Making Networking Cool Again? (1)

Is network engineering still cool?

It certainly doesn’t seem like it, does it? College admissions seem to be down in the network engineering programs I know of, and networking certifications seem to be down, too. Maybe we’ve just passed the top of the curve, and computer networking skills are just going the way of coopering. Let’s see if we can sort out the nature of this malaise and possible solutions. Fair warning—this is going to take more than one post.

Let’s start here: It could be that computer networking is a solved problem, and we just don’t need network engineers any longer.

I’ve certainly heard people say these kinds of things—for instance, one rather well-known network engineer said, just a few years back, that network engineers would no longer be needed in five years. According to this view, the entire network should be like a car. You get in, turn the key, and it “just works.” There shouldn’t be any excitement or concern about a commodity like transporting packets. Another illustration I’ve heard used is “network bandwidth should just be like computer memory—if you need more, add it.”

Does this really hold, though? Even if we accept the Continue reading

Raspberry Pi 5 real-time network analytics

CanaKit Raspberry Pi 5 Starter Kit - Aluminum
This article describes how build an inexpensive Raspberry Pi 5 based server for real-time flow analytics using industry standard sFlow streaming telemetry. Support for sFlow is widely implemented in datacenter equipment from vendors including: A10, Arista, Aruba, Cisco, Edge-Core, Extreme, Huawei, Juniper, NEC, Netgear, Nokia, NVIDIA, Quanta, and ZTE.
In this example, we will use an 8G Raspberry Pi 5 running Raspberry Pi OS Lite (64-bit).  The easiest way to format a memory card and install the operating system is to use the Raspberry Pi Imager (shown above).
Click on EDIT SETTINGS button to customize the installation.
Set a hostname, username, and password.
Click on the SERVICES tab and select Enable SSH.  Click SAVE to save the settings and then YES to apply the settings and create a bootable micro SD card. These initial settings allow the Rasberry Pi to be accessed over the network without having to attach a screen, keyboard, and mouse.
ssh [email protected]
Use ssh to log into Raspberry Pi (having installled the micro SD card).
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get -y upgrade
Update packages and OS to latest version.
curl  Continue reading

VXLAN/EVPN – Host mobility

In the previous post VXLAN/EVPN – Host ARP, I talked about how knowing the MAC/IP of endpoints allows for ARP suppression. In this post we’ll take a look at host mobility. The topology used is the same as in the previous post:

Currently SERVER-1 is connected to LEAF-1. What happens if SERVER-1 moves to LEAF-2? This would be a common scenario for a virtual infrastructure. First let’s take a look at LEAF-4 on what routes we have for SERVER-1:

Leaf4# show bgp l2vpn evpn 0050.56ad.8506
BGP routing table information for VRF default, address family L2VPN EVPN
Route Distinguisher: 192.0.2.3:32777
BGP routing table entry for [2]:[0]:[0]:[48]:[0050.56ad.8506]:[0]:[0.0.0.0]/216, version 662
Paths: (2 available, best #2)
Flags: (0x000202) (high32 00000000) on xmit-list, is not in l2rib/evpn, is not in HW

  Path type: internal, path is valid, not best reason: Neighbor Address, no labeled nexthop
  AS-Path: NONE, path sourced internal to AS
    203.0.113.1 (metric 81) from 192.0.2.12 (192.0.2.2)
      Origin IGP, MED not set, localpref 100, weight 0
      Received label 10000
      Extcommunity: RT:65000:10000 ENCAP:8
      Originator: 192.0.2.3 Cluster list: 192.0.2.2 

  Advertised  Continue reading
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