Our analysis posts provide a deeper dive on what certain trends mean to the industry. In 2017 these articles coveraged a wide swath of topics from the best tools for deploying containers to how network virtualization will help companies track compliance issues.
In 2017 many organizations and companies offered up their time and experience to teach us all something new. A number of topics were covered, from deciphering network traffic to simplifying the data center.
Hans Vestberg resurfaces; Meg Whitman resigns; and other movers and shakers of 2017.
It all culminated with a dramatic decision by Broadcom.
Users review CA Spectrum and Micro Focus Network Node Manager.
Usually, the performance of a Linux subsystem is measured through an external (local or remote) process stressing it. Depending on the input point used, a large portion of code may be involved. To benchmark a single function, one solution is to write a kernel module.
Let’s suppose we want to benchmark the IPv4 route lookup function,
fib_lookup(). The following kernel function executes 1,000 lookups
for 8.8.8.8 and returns the average value.1 It uses the
get_cycles() function to compute the execution “time.”
/* Execute a benchmark on fib_lookup() and put result into the provided buffer `buf`. */ static int do_bench(char *buf) { unsigned long long t1, t2; unsigned long long total = 0; unsigned long i; unsigned count = 1000; int err = 0; struct fib_result res; struct flowi4 fl4; memset(&fl4, 0, sizeof(fl4)); fl4.daddr = in_aton("8.8.8.8"); for (i = 0; i < count; i++) { t1 = get_cycles(); err |= Continue reading
PowerfulSeal test platform likened to Netflix's Chaos Monkey.
On Monday we released our latest version of Cumulus Linux, 3.5. It includes symmetric VxLAN routing, Voice VLAN and 10 new hardware platforms. This includes General Availability (GA) of our two supported chassis, the four slot Backpack and eight slot OMP800. We announced Early Access (EA) support for both chassis in our previous release, Cumulus Linux 3.4.
At Cumulus, moving fast to fix problems and get features in the hands of our customers is core to our culture. In today’s webscale networks, it’s hard for even the largest of organizations to operate on classic 18+ month buying cycles. Some folks want the ability to use new technology as soon as possible.
The EA process gives customers the ability to use working software or hardware and provide direct feedback on the final product. That feedback improves all aspects of the product, from purchasing, delivery, default configurations or operations.
When we announced EA for our chassis systems, we had many Fortune 500 customers express interest. For some, the EA process allowed them to start the purchasing process knowing that it would take months until a final purchase order was ready. For others, they were able to put working, stable Continue reading
I’m doing some research on Facebook’s Open/R routing platform for a future blog post. I’m starting to understand the nuances a bit compared to OSPF or IS-IS, but during my reading I got stopped cold by one particular passage:
Many traditional routing protocols were designed in the past, with a strong focus on optimizing for hardware-limited embedded systems such as CPUs and RAM. In addition, protocols were designed as purpose-built solutions to solve the particular problem of routing for connectivity, rather than as a flexible software platform to build new applications in the network.
Uh oh. I’ve seen language like this before related to other software projects. And quite frankly, it worries me to death. Because it means that people aren’t learning their lessons.
Any time I see an article about how a project was rewritten from the ground up to “take advantage of new changes in protocols and resources”, it usually signals to me that some grad student decided to rewrite the whole thing in Java because they didn’t understand C. It sounds a bit cynical, but it’s not often wrong.
Want proof? Check out Linus Torvalds and his opinion about rewriting the Linux kernel in Continue reading
Earlier this year, as part of the Internet Society’s 25th anniversary celebration, we asked you to share your memories of the early Internet. As we look forward to the new year, it’s fun to read through the stories and look back at where we started.
One of the earliest memories was from Stanford University.
I got my first Arpanet email account in 1978.
[By 1985] All the graduate students and professors had accounts, and there was a campus Ethernet, Macs were being integrated into the network via AppleTalk (print and file sharing services)… Also, beyond email we had ftp servers that served shareware and USENET to help with sysadmin problems. Much of the networking software and hardware was developed on campus, including the AppleTalk gateways (Kinetics) and routers (early Cisco protoypes).
There was also this dose of funny reality from nearly ten thousand kilometers away, in Moscow:
I had remote data connection more than 26 years ago, in 1991. We had so called dial up modem connection via telephone PSTN pre-analogue PBX- the step-by-step switch.
It was toooooo extremely long.
Another member shared this memory from INET ’93 San Francisco:
…among the papers and presentations one which drew the largest crowd was Continue reading
In Episode 18 of Network Collective, Pete Lumbis of Cumulus Networks and Kevin Myers of IP Architechs join us to talk about the pros and cons of running whitebox or commodity hardware in your network. There’s no denying that the price point on commodity hardware is attractive but we discuss all you should consider when you’re looking to transition away from a major network hardware vendor.
Show Notes
What is whitebox networking?
Why whitebox networking?
In case you’ve missed it, this week we’re highlighting the top five most popular Docker blogs in 2017. Coming in the third place is the announcement of LinuxKit, a toolkit for building secure, lean and portable Linux Subsystems.
LinuxKit includes the tooling to allow building custom Linux subsystems that only include exactly the components the runtime platform requires. All system services are containers that can be replaced, and everything that is not required can be removed. All components can be substituted with ones that match specific needs. It is a kit, very much in the Docker philosophy of batteries included but swappable. LinuxKit is an open source project available at https://github.com/linuxkit/linuxkit.
To achieve our goals of a secure, lean and portable OS,we built it from containers, for containers. Security is a top-level objective and aligns with NIST stating, in their draft Application Container Security Guide: “Use container-specific OSes instead of general-purpose ones to reduce attack surfaces. When using a container-specific OS, attack surfaces are typically much smaller than they would be with a general-purpose OS, so there are fewer opportunities to attack and compromise a container-specific OS.”
The leanness directly helps with security by removing parts not Continue reading
Here is a list of our Top 5 sponsored posts of 2017
Virtualization becomes a bigger part of 5G discussion.