35 years ago, mainframes, single-protocol networks (be it SNA or DECnet), and centralized architectures that would make hard-core SDN evangelists gloat with unbridled pride were all the rage. If you’re old enough to remember IBM SNA, you know what I’m talking about.
A few years later, everything changed.
Read more ...Four years ago, I lamented the lackluster selection of IPAM applications available for service providers. Unfortunately, it seems not much has changed lately. I was back to exploring IPAM offerings again recently, this time with the needs of a cloud hosting provider in mind. I demoed a few tools, but none of them seemed to fit the bill (or they did, but were laughably overpriced).
So, I decided to write my own. In my rantings a few years back, I had considered this option:
Could I create a custom IPAM solution with everything we need? Sure! The problem is that I'm a network engineer, not a programmer (a natural division of labor which, it seems, is mostly to blame for the lack of robust IPAM solutions available). Even if I had the time to undertake such a project, I have little interest in providing long-term maintenance of it.
My opinion has not changed, but I've come to realize that if I want a tool that fits my requirements, I will need to build it. And after surprisingly little time, I'm happy to report that I have now have a kick-ass IPAM tool that does exactly what I want it to.
Four years ago, I lamented the lackluster selection of IPAM applications available for service providers. Unfortunately, it seems not much has changed lately. I was back to exploring IPAM offerings again recently, this time with the needs of a cloud hosting provider in mind. I demoed a few tools, but none of them seemed to fit the bill (or they did, but were laughably overpriced).
So, I decided to write my own. In my rantings a few years back, I had considered this option:
Could I create a custom IPAM solution with everything we need? Sure! The problem is that I'm a network engineer, not a programmer (a natural division of labor which, it seems, is mostly to blame for the lack of robust IPAM solutions available). Even if I had the time to undertake such a project, I have little interest in providing long-term maintenance of it.
My opinion has not changed, but I've come to realize that if I want a tool that fits my requirements, I will need to build it. And after surprisingly little time, I'm happy to report that I have now have a kick-ass IPAM tool that does exactly what I want it to.
Four years ago, I lamented the lackluster selection of IPAM applications available for service providers. Unfortunately, it seems not much has changed lately. I was back to exploring IPAM offerings again recently, this time with the needs of a cloud hosting provider in mind. I demoed a few tools, but none of them seemed to fit the bill (or they did, but were laughably overpriced).
So, I decided to write my own. In my rantings a few years back, I had considered this option:
Could I create a custom IPAM solution with everything we need? Sure! The problem is that I'm a network engineer, not a programmer (a natural division of labor which, it seems, is mostly to blame for the lack of robust IPAM solutions available). Even if I had the time to undertake such a project, I have little interest in providing long-term maintenance of it.
My opinion has not changed, but I've come to realize that if I want a tool that fits my requirements, I will need to build it. And after surprisingly little time, I'm happy to report that I have now have a kick-ass IPAM tool that does exactly what I want it to.
Introduction
This post will describe PIM Bidir, why it is needed and the design considerations for using PIM BiDir. This post is focused on technology overview and design and will not contain any actual configurations.
Multicast Applications
Multicast is a technology that is mainly used for one-to-many and many-to-many applications. The following are examples of applications that use or can benefit from using multicast.
One-to-many
One-to-many applications have a single sender and multiple receivers. These are examples of applications in the one-to-many model.
Scheduled audio/video: IP-TV, radio, lectures
Push media: News headlines, weather updates, sports scores
File distributing and caching: Web site content or any file-based updates sent to distributed end-user or replicating/caching sites
Announcements: Network time, multicast session schedules
Monitoring: Stock prices, security system or other real-time monitoring applications
Many-to-many
Many-to-many applications have many senders and many receivers. One-to-many applications are unidirectional and many-to-many applications are bidirectional.
Multimedia conferencing: Audio/video and whiteboard is the classic conference application
Synchronized resources: Shared distributed databases of any type
Distance learning: One-to-many lecture but with “upstream” capability where receivers can question the lecturer
Multi-player games: Many multi-player games are distributed simulations and also have chat group capabilities.
Overview of PIM
PIM has Continue reading
Fluke Networks recently released TruView Live, a subscription-based service for monitoring internal & external applications. Tests can run from Fluke-managed cloud locations, your own systems, or from dedicated hardware appliances. I’ve been testing it out, and I like it so far.
Overall setup is pretty straightforward. Choose what you want to monitor, and how you want to monitor it – from AWS locations, from your own server, or from a dedicated hardware device.
Global Pulses run on Fluke-managed AWS instances. You just pick the Global Locations you want to run from, and assign tests as needed.
Go to Administration -> Pulses -> Deploy Global Pulse. Select the locations you want, and click Deploy.
A Virtual Pulse is an application running on Windows (7/8/2008/2012) or Linux systems (RHEL 7.0, Ubuntu 14.04). This does not need to be a dedicated device – e.g. You might need Continue reading
Since starting to play with golang I’ve run into a couple of interesting items I thought worth writing about. For those of you that are seasoned developers, I assure you, this wont be interesting. But for us that are getting started this might be worth reading.
Pointers
Nothing super exciting here if you’ve used them in other languages but it’s worth talking about since it can be confusing. Pointers are really just a way for us to gain access to the ‘real’ variable when you aren’t in the function that defines it. Put another way, when you call a function that takes a variable, you are only giving that function a copy of the variable, not the real variable. Pointers allow us to reference the actual location in memory where the value is stored rather than the value itself. Examples always make this more clear. Take for instance this example of code…
package main
import "fmt"
func main() {
//Define myname and set it to 'jonlangemak'
myname := "jonlangemak"
//Rename without using pointers
rename(myname)
fmt.Println(myname)
//Rename using pointers
pointerrename(&myname)
fmt.Println(myname)
}
//Function without pointers
func rename(myname string) {
myname = Continue reading
Today's show looks at building a data center fabric around Juniper's QFX switch line to improve automation and enable IT service delivery. Thanks to our sponsor Juniper Networks.
The post Show 249 – Juniper QFX DC Fabrics & Automation – Sponsored appeared first on Packet Pushers.
Service providers like SDN, Cisco attempts to fix a security gap, and Nokia makes room for AlcaLu.
TL;DR: Delete and resubscribe to the Weekly Show feed, as the current RSS feed is correct on iTunes now. You will only see the Weekly Show podcasts again, as in the past. Sorry about the issue; it was an accident. Read on for the gory details if you care to...
The post How To Fix Your Weekly Show Feed In iTunes appeared first on Packet Pushers.