The Tug Of War Between InfiniBand And Ethernet

If you want to get a microcosmic view of the epic battle between Ethernet and InfiniBand (which also includes Omni-Path no matter how much Intel protests) as they relate to high performance computing in its many modern guises, there is perhaps no better place to look at what Mellanox Technologies is selling.

Mellanox, which has been peddling InfiniBand chips, switches, and adapters since the inception of this technology, bought its biggest rival in switch sales, Voltaire, for $218 million back in November 2010. And that was perhaps its smartest move right up to the moment where the company launched …

The Tug Of War Between InfiniBand And Ethernet was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

Network Automation Engineer Persona: Targeted Learning

The series of Network Automation Engineer (NAE) Persona blog posts have churned some comments in the community around learning. Part of the feedback appears to be the hero syndrome fighting back and also the odd misunderstanding, which might be a result of fear. Change often results in fear, so this is natural.

Network Heroes

Some people love networking because it makes them feel special. Some people have got used to that special feeling and hang on to the fact that they’re 

important
. These network engineers feel like a “Packet Lord”.

Automation is designed to remove from humans deterministic and testable tasks. One result is fewer self-titled “Prime minister of Packets” and fewer bottlenecks. Taking IaC (Infrastructure as Code), it becomes so much simpler to define tasks, implement them and test for success or failure. Dealing with sources of truth is part of the natural flow of the process instead of an afterthought on a Friday afternoon.

The hero very much becomes the norm at this point.

Articles

At a high level, the articles discuss the evolving NAE persona and not what you should or shouldn’t learn. The articles do not discourage learning, they recognise and promote learning. After all, you Continue reading

IDG Contributor Network: Zombie companies are everywhere! But there’s a cure

It’s zombie season again! Not only was The Walking Dead back with new episodes this month, but neighborhoods around the country are about to be crawling with zombies (most can be staved off with a little chocolate).In business, unfortunately, zombie season has been in full swing for some time. This is an era of digital disruption, and it’s completely changed the way business is done, but not everyone has gotten on board. Companies are persisting with outdated business models, investing in outdated products, and committed to outdated delivery methods. To me, these companies are zombies, dead without knowing it. They may be moving forward, but don’t let the motion fool you, they’re only moving toward obsolescence.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Zombie companies are everywhere! But there’s a cure

It’s zombie season again! Not only was The Walking Dead back with new episodes this month, but neighborhoods around the country are about to be crawling with zombies (most can be staved off with a little chocolate).In business, unfortunately, zombie season has been in full swing for some time. This is an era of digital disruption, and it’s completely changed the way business is done, but not everyone has gotten on board. Companies are persisting with outdated business models, investing in outdated products, and committed to outdated delivery methods. To me, these companies are zombies, dead without knowing it. They may be moving forward, but don’t let the motion fool you, they’re only moving toward obsolescence.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Worth Reading: The calm before the IoT Storm (Reaper)

It’s been just over a year since the world witnessed some of the world’s top online Web sites being taken down for much of the day by “Mirai,” a zombie malware strain that enslaved “Internet of Things” (IoT) devices such as wireless routers, security cameras and digital video recorders for use in large-scale online attacks. Now, experts are sounding the alarm about the emergence of what appears to be a far more powerful strain of IoT attack malware — variously named “Reaper” and “IoTroop” — that spreads via security holes in IoT software and hardware. And there are indications that over a million organizations may be affected already. —Krebs on Security

Hybrid Fortran Pulls Legacy Codes into Acceleration Era

GPU accelerated supercomputing is not a new phenomenon with many high performance computing codes already primed to run on Nvidia hardware in particular.

However, for some legacy codes with special needs (changing models, high computational demands), particularly in areas like weather, the gap between those codes and the promise of GPU acceleration is rather large, even with higher level tools like OpenACC to bridge the divide—all without major code rewrites.

Given the limitations of porting some legacy Fortran codes to GPUs, a research team Tokyo Tech has devised what it calls, “hybrid Fortran” which is designed to “increase productivity when …

Hybrid Fortran Pulls Legacy Codes into Acceleration Era was written by Nicole Hemsoth at The Next Platform.

Applying Software Agility to Network Design

The paper we are looking at in this post is tangential to the world of network engineering, rather than being directly targeted at network engineering. The thesis of On Understanding Software Agility—A Social Complexity Point of View, is that at least some elements of software development are a wicked problem, and hence need to be managed through complexity. The paper sets the following criteria for complexity—

  • Interaction: made up of a lot of interacting systems
  • Autonomy: subsystems are largely autonomous within specified bounds
  • Emergence: global behavior is unpredictable, but can be explained in subsystem interactions
  • Lack of equilibrium: events prevent the system from reaching a state of equilibrium
  • Nonlinearity: small events cause large output changes
  • Self-organization: self-organizing response to disruptive events
  • Co-evolution: the system and its environment adapt to one another

It’s pretty clear network design and operation would fit into the 7 points made above; the control plane, transport protocols, the physical layer, hardware, and software are all subsystems of an overall system. Between these subsystems, there is clearly interaction, and each subsystem acts autonomously within bounds. The result is a set of systemic behaviors that cannot be predicted from examining the system itself. The network design process is, Continue reading

LDP retention and distribution modes

MPLS protocol uses labels to forward traffic between point A and B. These labels are binded to FECs and distributed on the network by means of different protocols like (LDP, RSVP, BGP-LS, SPRING). LDP (Label Distribution Protocol “RFC5036”) is still by far the widely used protocol among them and was developed to do label distribution …

Continue reading "LDP retention and distribution modes"

The post LDP retention and distribution modes appeared first on Cisco Network Design and Architecture | CCDE Bootcamp | orhanergun.net.

LDP retention and distribution modes

MPLS protocol uses labels to forward traffic between point A and B. These labels are binded to FECs and distributed on the network by means of different protocols like (LDP, RSVP, BGP-LS, SPRING). LDP (Label Distribution Protocol “RFC5036”) is still by far the widely used protocol among them and was developed to do label distribution …

Continue reading "LDP retention and distribution modes"

The post LDP retention and distribution modes appeared first on Cisco Network Design and Architecture | CCDE Bootcamp | orhanergun.net.

LDP retention and distribution modes

MPLS protocol uses labels to forward traffic between point A and B. These labels are binded to FECs and distributed on the network by means of different protocols like (LDP, RSVP, BGP-LS, SPRING). LDP (Label Distribution Protocol “RFC5036”) is still by far the widely used protocol among them and was developed to do label distribution […]

The post LDP retention and distribution modes appeared first on Cisco Network Design and Architecture | CCDE Bootcamp | orhanergun.net.

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