VPP MPLS – Part 1

VPP

About this series

Ever since I first saw VPP - the Vector Packet Processor - I have been deeply impressed with its performance and versatility. For those of us who have used Cisco IOS/XR devices, like the classic ASR (aggregation service router), VPP will look and feel quite familiar as many of the approaches are shared between the two.

I’ve deployed an MPLS core for IPng Networks, which allows me to provide L2VPN services, and at the same time keep an IPng Site Local network with IPv4 and IPv6 that is separate from the internet, based on hardware/silicon based forwarding at line rate and high availability. You can read all about my Centec MPLS shenanigans in [this article].

Ever since the release of the Linux Control Plane [ref] plugin in VPP, folks have asked “What about MPLS?” – I have never really felt the need to go this rabbit hole, because I figured that in this day and age, higher level IP protocols that do tunneling are just as performant, and a little bit less of an ‘art’ to get right. For example, the Centec switches I deployed perform VxLAN, GENEVE and GRE all at Continue reading

MUST READ: End-to-End Arguments in System Design

In case you ever wondered how old the “keep network simple and do complex stuff at the endpoints” approach is, read the End-to-End Arguments in System Design article from 1981.

For whatever reason (hint: profits), networking vendors keep ignoring those arguments, turning the network into a kitchen sink of complexity.

Fun tidbit: the article describes a variant of relying on layer-2 checksums will corrupt your data. Some things never change.

MUST READ: End-to-End Arguments in System Design

In case you ever wondered how old the “keep network simple and do complex stuff at the endpoints” approach is, read the End-to-End Arguments in System Design article from 1981.

For whatever reason (hint: profits), networking vendors keep ignoring those arguments, turning the network into a kitchen sink of complexity.

Fun tidbit: the article describes a variant of relying on layer-2 checksums will corrupt your data. Some things never change.

The Internet as a Public Utility

The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw the rise of public utilities, operating in areas of public transit, postal services, water reticulation, electricity generation and transmission, and telephony services. In the past fifty or so years the position of public sector utilities has been eroded, with progressive waves of deregulation and liberalisation of these public utility services. The internet could be see as one outcome of the deregulation of the telephony sector. But how's this going? Should we rethink how we operate public utility functions and the Internet in particular?

Weekend Reads 050523


The past decade has seen numerous reports of so-called cloud “repatriations”–the migration of applications back to on-premises venues following negative experiences with, or unsuccessful migrations to, the public cloud.


While agile software development is often associated with specific methodologies, such as Scrum, Kanban, and Extreme Programming it is not enough to just follow such a methodology.


The heady, exciting days of ChatGPT and other generative AI and large-language models (LLMs) is beginning to give way to the understanding that enterprises will need to get a tight grasp on how these models are being used in their operations or they will risk privacy, security, legal, and other problems down the road.


When deploying changes to an application, there are several strategies you can use.


The sad story of OAuth 2.0 and open standards.


Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) was developed and established to foster a safe cardholder data practice in the industry.


While the DNS (Web2) has been a reliable and trusted internet standard for decades, Web3 platforms (such as ENS, Handshake and Unstoppable) are a relatively new technology deployment that presents unique and different features.


In this blog post, we at the University Grenoble Alpes (France) Continue reading

Worth Reading: IPv6 Deployment Status

RFC 9386 documenting IPv6 deployment status in late 2022 has been published a few weeks ago1. It claims over a billion IPv6-capable users, and IPv6 deployment close to 50% in major countries.

Web content is a different story: while 40% of top-500 sites are IPv6-enabled, you can reach only ~20% of web sites over IPv6. Considering Cloudflare’s free proxying includes IPv6 that is enabled by default, that proves (once again) how slowly things change in IT.

Want to get IPv6 deployed but don’t know where to start? Check out ipSpace.net IPv6 webinars ;)
Read more …

Worth Reading: IPv6 Deployment Status

RFC 9386 documenting IPv6 deployment status in late 2022 has been published a few weeks ago1. It claims over a billion IPv6-capable users, and IPv6 deployment close to 50% in major countries.

Web content is a different story: while 40% of top-500 sites are IPv6-enabled, you can reach only ~20% of web sites over IPv6. Considering Cloudflare’s free proxying includes IPv6 that is enabled by default, that proves (once again) how slowly things change in IT.

Want to get IPv6 deployed but don’t know where to start? Check out ipSpace.net IPv6 webinars ;)
Read more …

Heavy Networking 678: How Cisco Accelerates The IP/Optical Automation Journey (Sponsored)

On today's Heavy Networking we dive into the frameworks commonly used by service providers to tackle network slicing and traffic engineering challenges. We'll also talk their pros and cons, and the approach that Cisco is seeing its customers adopt as providers create virtual networking products for their customers. Cisco is our sponsor for today's show.

The post Heavy Networking 678: How Cisco Accelerates The IP/Optical Automation Journey (Sponsored) appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Microsoft reportedly rallies behind AMD to develop chips for AI workloads

Microsoft is reportedly partnering with AMD to help the chip maker develop advanced processors that support artificial AI workloads. Microsoft’s increased demand for chips that can support AI applications is due to the number of AI-based products and services it has recently released in collaboration with OpenAI, creator of ChatGPT.As a result, Microsoft has decided to collaborate with AMD to provide an alternative to Nvidia, which dominates the market for graphics processing units (GPUs) used for AI applications, according to a Bloomberg report.To read this article in full, please click here

Build Your K8s Environment For The Real World Part 2 – Day One Ops

Part one of this blog post series explored Day Zero Ops, which covers all the planning for how you want your environment to look. Before you can implement, you must plan. Oftentimes, engineers try implementing without proper planning, which results in tech debt later on. Once you’ve set up a robust plan, it’s time to […]

The post Build Your K8s Environment For The Real World Part 2 – Day One Ops appeared first on Packet Pushers.

The Shifting Lens of Mentoring

The other day I realized that I had become the “old man” at Tech Field Day. Not so much that I’m ready for AARP but more that I’ve been there longer than anyone else but Stephen. The realization was a long time coming but the thing that pushed me to understand it was when someone asked a question about a policy we had and I not only knew the reason why we did it but also a time before we had it.

As I spent time thinking about the way that I’ve graduated from being the new guy to the old mentor I thought about the inflection point when the changeover happened.

Green and Growing

The first part of the demarcation between mentor and mentee in my eyes is where the knowledge lies. When you’re first starting out you’re the one that needs to understand things. You ask lots and lots of questions and try to understand how things are done and why you do them that way. Focusing on that knowledge acquisition is part of the marker of someone in need of mentorship.

For those trying to mentor these eager employees don’t make the mistake of getting frustrated at Continue reading

Broadcom CEO pledges $2 billion for VMware R&D, professional services support

Broadcom said it will spend $2 billion a year to accelerate research and development for VMware products and services.In making the investment assurance, Broadcom CEO Hock Tan wrote in a blog post: “By extending our multi-cloud strategy, we will invest in extending VMware’s software stack to run and manage workloads across private and public clouds, which means any enterprise can run application workloads easily, securely, and seamlessly on-prem, or in any cloud platform they prefer.”“If companies can run VMware as a private cloud on-prem, they should be able to take their same application workloads to the public cloud without needing to re-engineer that application or worry about being locked into the public cloud providers that they choose,” Tan stated.To read this article in full, please click here

Broadcom CEO pledges $2 billion for VMware R&D, professional services support

Broadcom said it will spend $2 billion a year to accelerate research and development for VMware products and services.In making the investment assurance, Broadcom CEO Hock Tan wrote in a blog post: “By extending our multi-cloud strategy, we will invest in extending VMware’s software stack to run and manage workloads across private and public clouds, which means any enterprise can run application workloads easily, securely, and seamlessly on-prem, or in any cloud platform they prefer.”“If companies can run VMware as a private cloud on-prem, they should be able to take their same application workloads to the public cloud without needing to re-engineer that application or worry about being locked into the public cloud providers that they choose,” Tan stated.To read this article in full, please click here

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