Upcoming Events: Data Center Fabrics Workshop in Zurich

Online webinars are great, but many engineers still prefer live workshops – they’re an excellent opportunity for unrestricted 2-way communication and exchange of ideas – so I decided to turn a few of my best webinars (or webinar tracks) into workshops, and Gabi Gerber, the wonderful organizer of Data Center days in Switzerland took over the logistics, resulting in the first-ever Data Center Fabrics workshop in Zurich in late March.

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Network Design – Where Should I Start?

After listening to a recent Packet Pushers podcast, the question was raised about network design and where the network design should start. When I first started designing IT, I believed the correct starting point was to define the required outcome through the deployment of technology. For example, the requirement from the customer could be to […]

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Network Design – Where Should I Start?

After listening to a recent Packet Pushers podcast, the question was raised about network design and where the network design should start. When I first started designing IT, I believed the correct starting point was to define the required outcome through the deployment of technology. For example, the requirement from the customer could be to […]

The post Network Design – Where Should I Start? appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Non-Blocking 1: sFlow with Peter Phaal of InMon and sFlow.org

The inaugural "Non-Blocking" podcast for ForwardingPlane.net. We discuss sFlow with one if its creators, Peter Phaal of InMon.Discuss sFlow, the protocol, it's uses, similarities to other management frameworks, how it is dissimilar from netflow and why it is worth while to take some time to learn it.

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Non-Blocking #1: sFlow with Peter Phaal of InMon and sFlow.org

The inaugural "Non-Blocking" podcast for ForwardingPlane.net. We discuss sFlow with one if its creators, Peter Phaal of InMon.Discuss sFlow, the protocol, it's uses, similarities to other management frameworks, how it is dissimilar from netflow and why it is worth while to take some time to learn it.

The post Non-Blocking #1: sFlow with Peter Phaal of InMon and sFlow.org appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Flawed From the Start & Missing the Mark: Georgia’s Proposed Anti-Drone Legislation

Bad state laws can have the same chilling effect on technology as bad federal laws.  In this guest post, friend of Errata Elizabeth Wharton (@lawyerliz) discusses the latest anti-drone law introduced here in the Georgia legislature and how one bill manages to kill innovation across several key Georgia industries. 




By Elizabeth Wharton 
Georgia’s newly proposed anti-drone legislation is an economic and research buzz kill.  The bill, HB 779, through poorly crafted provisions places unnecessary red tape for use of drones by the film industry and by cellular, telephone, and cable utility companies.  It also completely shuts down Georgia's aerospace defense industry research (and related funding) conducted by universities including Georgia Tech and all related manufacturing by companies such as Lockheed Martin.  Biting the industry hands that bring billions of dollars into Georgia’s economy seems a bold move for state legislators, particularly during an election year.    

Gaps between technology policy and technology practice at the federal level such as the Commerce Department’s proposed Wassenaar Arrangement rules, extend to the states as well.  With over 168 drone-related bills considered by 45 states in 2015 according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 2016 is already off to a Continue reading

Break Those Chains

So because I’m new to this whole blogging at Packet Pushers thing (and blogging in general), I’ve been trying to decide on my place in the grand scheme of things. There are a lot of folks here that do a great job of deep-dives, vendor happenings, and general overviews. I could do those, but what’s the point of rehashing what this site and 100s of others (Google FTW) do?

The post Break Those Chains appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Break Those Chains

So because I’m new to this whole blogging at Packet Pushers thing (and blogging in general), I’ve been trying to decide on my place in the grand scheme of things. There are a lot of folks here that do a great job of deep-dives, vendor happenings, and general overviews. I could do those, but what’s the point of rehashing what this site and 100s of others (Google FTW) do?

The post Break Those Chains appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Demystifying NFV Infrastructure Hotspots

Slides from the recent Dell NFV Summit 2015 are now available. Steve Wright's 7 Fallacies of NFV talk describes the importance of managing network resources in an NFV stack. The diagram above shows the complex network data paths that result from NFV as packets flow between virtual functions across physical and virtual switches.
The presentation describes how the Fallacies of Distributes Computing apply to NFV, highlighting the importance of effective management of network resources for effective NFV deployment.

Another paper, Demystifying NFV Infrastructure Hotspots by Ramki Krishnan, Anoop Ghanwani, and Michael Tien, demonstrates how industry standard sFlow instrumentation build into physical and virtual switches can provide the comprehensive real-time analytics needed to manage NFV deployments.
The vIMS (virtualized IP Multimedia Subsystem) is used as an example. The diagram below shows the functional elements of the logical architecture deployed on the hardware testbed shown above.
sFlow telemetry from the physical switches in the leaf and spine network, virtual switch instances, and hypervisors is streamed to an instance of the sFlow-RT analytics platform.
The dashboard application running on sFlow-RT demonstrates visibility into the traffic flows between virtual network functions.
The final set of charts in the dashboard shows the multi-media traffic flows running Continue reading