Cisco’s Intent-Based Networking ‘Second Wave’ Is All About Assurance
New assurance software continuously verifies the network is operating as intended, the company claims.
Revisited: The Need for Stretched VLANs
Regardless of how much I write about (the ridiculousness of using) stretched VLANs, I keep getting questions along the same lines. This time it’s:
What type of applications require L2 Extension and L3 extension?
I don’t think I’ve seen anyone use L3 extension (after all, isn’t that what Internet is all about), so let’s focus on the first one.
Stretched VLANs (or L2 extensions) are used to solve a number of unrelated problems, because once a vendor sold you a hammer everything starts looking like a nail, and once you get used to replacing everything with nails, you want to use them in all possible environments, including public and hybrid clouds.
Read more ...Network Break 169: Cisco Buys Skyport; Dell Flirts With An IPO
Today on the Network Break we examine Cisco's latest acquisition, discuss rumors of a Dell IPO, look at Juniper's revamp of OpenContrail and more tech news. The post Network Break 169: Cisco Buys Skyport; Dell Flirts With An IPO appeared first on Packet Pushers.
Telco Billing Company Matrixx Raises $40 Million in Series C
The company says a Tier 1 North American operator is a customer.
LiveAction’s LiveSP Platform Includes SD-WAN Monitoring, Scalability
The technology comes from its recent acquisition of LivingObjects.
Cato Networks CEO Claims Company Is the ‘Uncarrier’ of the SD-WAN World
"We are a new type of carrier that offers cloud DNA to the old world of WAN.”
Graphcore Builds Momentum with Early Silicon
There has been a great deal of interest in deep learning chip startup, Graphcore, since we first got the limited technical details of the company’s first-generation chip last year, which was followed by revelations about how their custom software stack can run a range of convolutional, recurrent, generative adversarial neural network jobs.
In our conversations with those currently using GPUs for large-scale training (often with separate CPU only inference clusters), we have found generally that there is great interest in all new architectures for deep learning workloads. But what would really seal the deal is something that could both training …
Graphcore Builds Momentum with Early Silicon was written by Nicole Hemsoth at The Next Platform.
Dynamic Inventory: Past, Present & Future
In Red Hat Ansible Engine 2.4, we made some changes to how inventory works. We introduced a new cli tool, and added an inventory plugin type.
The goal of this plugin type, was well, to make Ansible Engine even more pluggable. All kidding aside, we wanted to provide Ansible Engine content authors and Ansible Engine users a new way to visualize their target inventory. Using the ansible-inventory command, the targeted inventory will be listed with the details of the hosts in that inventory, and the hosts groups.
For example:
[thaumos@ecb51a545078 /]# ansible-inventory -i ~/Development/playbooks/inventory/prod.aws_ec2.yml --list
{
"_meta": {
"hostvars": {
"ec2-5x-xx-x-xxx.us-west-2.compute.amazonaws.com": {
"AmiLaunchIndex": 2,
"Architecture": "x86_64",
"BlockDeviceMappings": [
{
"DeviceName": "/dev/sda1",
"Ebs": {
"AttachTime": "2017-12-13T15:40:19+00:00",
"DeleteOnTermination": false,
"Status": "attached",
"VolumeId": "vol-0514xxx"
}
}
],
"ClientToken": "",
"EbsOptimized": false,
"Hypervisor": "xen",
"ImageId": "ami-0c2aba6c",
"InstanceId": "i-009xxxx3",
"InstanceType": "t2.micro",
"KeyName": "blogKey",
"LaunchTime": "2017-12-13T15:40:18+00:00",
"Monitoring": {
"State": "disabled"
},
"NetworkInterfaces": [
{
"Association": {
"IpOwnerId": "amazon",
"PublicDnsName": "ec2-5x-xx-x-xxx.us-west-2.compute.amazonaws.com",
"PublicIp": "5x.xx.x.xxx"
},
"Attachment": {
"AttachTime": "2017-12-13T15:40:18+00:00",
"AttachmentId": "eni-attach-97c4xxxx",
"DeleteOnTermination": true,
"DeviceIndex": 0,
"Status": "attached"
},
"Description": "",
"Groups": [
{
"GroupId": "sg-e63xxxxd",
"GroupName": "blogGroup"
}
],
"Ipv6Addresses": Continue readingL3 routing to the hypervisor with BGP
On layer 2 networks, high availability can be achieved by:
- antique protocols, like the Spanning Tree Protocol,
- proprietary protocols, like Juniper’s virtual chassis, Cisco’s virtual port channel and other MC-LAG implementations,1
- standardized protocols, like Shortest Path Bridging Protocol or TRILL, or
- the underlying network (in the case of an overlay network, like VXLAN).
Layer 2 networks need very little configuration but come with a major drawback in highly available scenarios: an incident is likely to bring the whole network down.2 Therefore, it is safer to limit the scope of a single layer 2 network by, for example, using one distinct network in each rack and connecting them together with layer 3 routing. Incidents are unlikely to impact a whole IP network.
In the illustration below, top of the rack switches provide a default gateway for hosts. To provide redundancy, they use an MC-LAG implementation. Layer 2 fault domains are scoped to a rack. Each IP subnet is bound to a specific rack and routing information is shared between top of the rack switches and core routers using a routing protocol like OSPF.
There are two main issues with this design:
-
The Continue reading
The State of the Net Today – Why we must Act now for its Future
At the Internet Society, we are worried about the state of the Internet today. This global “network of networks” is now a critical part of our daily lives. We use it to communicate and connect with our families, friends, co-workers and customers. It is the engine that powers the global economy. It is our source of entertainment, of education, and of information. The Internet brings so many opportunities to all.
But… those opportunities are now under attack from several threats:
- Lack of trust – We now find ourselves asking key questions: how can we trust that the information we see online is accurate? How do we know we are communicating with the correct people?
- Security of the core of the Internet – The core infrastructure that creates the network of networks is now under constant attacks. Botnets, DDoS attacks, routing attacks – the public core of the Internet needs protection.
- The explosion of connected devices – We are connecting almost everything to the Internet, and this “Internet of Things (IoT)” is being largely connected with little concern for security.
- The growing divide between the connected and unconnected – Over 40% of the world’s people are not connected to the Internet, Continue reading
Memo to President Trump: Let’s Leave Wireless Networks to the Experts
Wireless networks aren’t easy, just ask the cable companies.
Nokia ReefShark, Future X Architectures Gird for 5G
The vendor is looking to distribute compute needs between the baseband and RF.