We Need Product Documentation, not just Glitzy Demos
Whenever a vendor approaches me touting the benefits of their new gizmo, they want to give me a product demo, or offer me access to online labs… and I always tell them I’m not interested until I see their design and configuration guides.
Here’s why I think you should take the same approach:
Read more ...Education for SDN from the ONF
After an incredibly busy week at the Layer 123 SDN World Congress in Düsseldorf, questions of how education is delivered and how it should be delivered in to the field are churning in my aching brain. After a (really) high number of conversations, it’s pretty clear that education for SDN, NfV and network automation is on the mind of professionals and current students alike.
With an almost cocky and over-confident certainty, it’s easy to guess that most network engineers and architects have taken the Cisco road to gain skill sets. Some invest in more neutral options like CBT Nuggets and IPSpace.net, which bring a rich variety of additional content. Cisco have almost certainly set in concrete the way traditional network engineers ‘have’ to learn and as the corporate ladder is ascended year by year, every freshly minted manager believes that his or her staff must follow the same road and ‘earn their spurs’. Not to say there was anything wrong with it, but times change and so must education and learning.
The traditional path to education and certification goes something like this:
NetEng: I need to learn and validate my learning for my employer, or partnership status Continue reading
More Features, Improved Lock-In
Found an interesting article on High Scalability blog (another must-read web site) on how PostgreSQL improves locking behavior in high-volume transaction environment.
Needless to say, the feature is totally proprietaryrather unique and not available in most other database products. Improved locking behavior ⇒ improved lock-in.
Moral of the story: Stop yammering. Networking is no different from any other field of IT.
Update: Yep, I goofed up on the proprietary bit (it was one of those “I don’t think this word means what you think it means” gotchas). However, if you think open source product can't have proprietary features or you can’t get locked into an open-source product, I congratulate you on your rosy perspective. Reality smudged mine years ago.
Ansible inventory, role variables and facts
I’ve been struggling a bit to understand how to use inventory, role variables and facts in the playbooks i’ve been working on (mostly around provisioning opencontrail on top of kubernetes/openshift-origin). I finally came up with a model that made sense to me. This is probably well understood by everyone else but i couldn’t quite grok it until i worked out the following example.
User configuration options should be set:
– In group_vars/all.yml for settings that affect all hosts;
– In the inventory file, for host and group variables;
As in this example:
It is useful to establish a convention for variables that are specific to the deployment (e.g. user settable variables). In this case i’m using flag_<var> as a convention for deployment specific variables.
Most of these would have defaults. In order to set the defaults, the playbook defines a role variable (flag_user_<var> in this example). The playbook role then uses flag_user_<var> rather than the original flag_<var>.
Role variables can use jinja template logic operations as well as filters. The most common operation is to use a <code>default</code> filter as in the example playbook bellow. But more complex logic can be built using {%if <expression> %}{% endif Continue reading
CCDE – Optical Design Considerations
Introduction
As a network architect you should not have to know all the details of the physical and data link layer. What you need to know though is how different transports can support the topology that you are looking to build. If you buy a circuit from an ISP, what protocols can you run over it? Is running MPLS over the circuit supported? What’s the maximum MTU? Is it possible to run STP over the link? This may be important when connecting data centers together through a Data Center Interconnect (DCI).
To be able to connect two data centers together, you will need to either connect via fibre or over a wavelength or buy circuits from an ISP. Renting a fibre will likely be more expensive but also more flexible if you have the need to run protocols such as MPLS over the link. For a pure DCI, just running IP may be enough so there could be cost savings if buying a circuit from an ISP instead.
For a big enough player it may also be feasible to build it all yourself. This post will look at the difference between Coarse Wave Division Multiplexing (CWDM) and Dense Wave Division Continue reading
SDxCentral Roundup — SDN & OpenFlow World Congress
Colt leverages SDN for data center connects; ONF conducts multi-vendor wireless transport SDN test.
Capture data on open-source router interfaces in GNS3
In this post, I will show how to set up data capture in the GNS3 network simulator when using network devices that are emulated by VirtualBox or QEMU virtual machines.
The GNS3 network simulator makes it easy for users to capture and view data passing across the interfaces of devices running in a GNS3 network simulation. The GNS3 documentation covers how to capture data from devices running on Dynamips in GNS3 but the procedures for capturing data from devices running in other hypervisors, such as VirtualBox or QEMU/KVM, are not well documented.
While GNS3 users may start and stop data capture on Dynamips VM interfaces any time they wish, they must plan ahead when they intend to capture data on open-source routers and hosts running on VirtualBox or QEMU virtual machines.
10 Gbps of Layer 2 throughput is possible using MikroTik’s EoIP tunnel.
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Getting to 10 Gbps using EoIP
The EoIP tunnel protocol is one of the more popular features we see deployed in MikroTik routers. It is useful anywhere a Layer 2 extension over a Layer 3 network is needed and can be done with very little effort / complexity. One of the questions that seems to come up on the forums frequently is how much traffic can an EoIP tunnel handle which is typically followed by questions about performance with IPSEC turned on. Answers given by MikroTik and others on forums.mikrotik.com typically fall into the 1 to 3 Gbps range with some hints that more is possible. We searched to see if anyone had done 10 Gbps over EoIP with or without IPSEC and came up empty handed. That prompted us to dive into the StubArea51 lab and set up a test network so we could get some hard data and definitive answers.
The EoIP protocol and recent enhancements
Ethernet over IP or EoIP is a protocol that started as an IETF draft somewhere around 2002 and MikroTik developed a proprietary implementation of it that has been in RouterOS for quite a while. Continue reading
Could Cisco Sell Hardware Subscriptions? Brocade, Big Switch Already Do
Brocade and Big Switch offer subscription and capacity pricing models for network hardware. Could Cisco follow?
The post Could Cisco Sell Hardware Subscriptions? Brocade, Big Switch Already Do appeared first on Packet Pushers.
IBM Snags OpenStack Expert from HP
Mestery will lead an IBM team focused on OpenStack networking.
PlexxiPulse—Forrester Tech Mixer Recap & A New PlexxiTube Video
Earlier this week our team was in Cambridge at the Forrester Tech Mixer. We had engaging conversations with Forrester analystsand emerging technology companies in the area. We always enjoy attending these events to hear about industry trends and innovative new technologies. It was a great time had by all!
We’ve also uploaded a new PlexxiTube video on Plexxi’s automated network. Take a look!
Below are a few of our top picks for our favorite news articles of the week. Have a great weekend.
FierceEnterpriseCommunications: Plexxi CEO: The future of networking is photonic underlays
By Chris Talbot
As he approaches his first anniversary as CEO of next-generation networking vendor Plexxi, Rich Napolitano is talking about the future of networks, and they’re not going to be focused on software-defined networking technology. SDN will play a huge role, of course, but it’s an overlay technology. Plexxi is focused on redefining the underlay, and it’s using photonic technology to do it.
Network Computing: SDN’s Northbound Interface Evolves
By Dr. Jim Metzler
Software defined networking requires both northbound and southbound interfaces to facilitate communication between physical devices, the SDN software and applications running on the network. On the southbound side, standards such as OpenFlow define Continue reading
SDxCentral Weekly News Roundup — October 16, 2015
OpenStack debuts Liberty, ONUG announces POC for Nov. conference, new ETSI specs among this week’s news