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Network Management Challenges of 2014

Network Management Challenges of 2014

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by Brian Boyko, Technology Commentator - March 4, 2014

No matter how much virtualization or abstraction or automation we place into the network, it still has to run on a physical infrastructure somewhere. And you still need to understand how the underlying network is performing, which route the traffic is taking, how much bandwidth each application needs and during what time periods, etc. 

So no matter how much the venerable router is under assault and in danger of becoming a commodity, we know that you will never be able to abstract all physical devices – or humans for that matter – from the network. But we will all need to adapt. 

This is the perspective we’re taking in this blog. Welcome to the first post of the Packet Design blog, where we will delve into all things network management, route analytics, SDN, IT and beyond. We’ll be covering issues for everyone affected by network management concerns. 

That’s a broader audience than you’d think at first glance. It of course includes the planners, architects and engineers who design, set up and maintain the network, the NOC staff who oversee it, the managers responsible Continue reading

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DEW Testimony

Thanks to God !! Finally all the effort to be Design Expert is paid off!
I really appreciate to Himawan for his knowledge and passion about CCDE mindset, insight and learning strategy to help my CCDE journey.
They are really enlightening and accelerating.
“Learn from the best to be the best” really works for me.
Thanks Him, great to have you as my mentor!!
All the best, brother :)
(Hinwoto – CCDE #2014::4 / CCIE #15026 RS & SP)

Thanks, Hinwoto, for the kind words.
And congratulations once again for your CCDE.

I can't make anyone to pass CCDE. And I don't think anyone can give promise that he or she can make you pass CCDE exam. The only person who can make you become CCDE is yourself. I, and all other CCDE study groups, training vendors, or individuals who spend time to help others to pass CCDE, can only help with knowledge and tips to prepare for the exam. You are the one who has to push yourself to continue learning. You have to gain experience and real design skills. You are the one who will make decision to get certified or not.

I can only show you the Continue reading

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Has SDN Changed Networking?

Software Defined Everything, NFV, OpenFlow, SDDC and Orchestrators are buzz words of DC networking. An interesting point would be to check whether these proposed solutions change our understanding of DC Networks? A good analogy to start with is chassis based switches (e.g Cisco’s Cat6500, Juniper’s EX8200). Regardless of how convoluted it may seem, any networking […]

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The post Has SDN Changed Networking? appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Karim Jamali.

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Capture your fancy, part one, PFC3

It's often incredibly useful to be able to capture transit traffic, it's quick way to prove that you're actually receiving some frames and with any luck have good idea how and where you are sending them. It's unfortunately common, especially in 7600/6500 PFC3 to have bug where packets are not going where software FIB suggests they are. Luckily there is quite good tooling to inspect what really is happening. So we're taking a peek at 'ELAM'.

We have traffic coming in unlabeled to 7600 and going out labeled. Let's see how to capture it

psl2-pe2.hel.fi#show platform capture elam asic superman slot 5 psl2-pe2.hel.fi#show platform capture elam trigger dbus ipv4 help SEQ_NUM [5] QOS [3] QOS_TYPE [1] TYPE [4] STATUS_BPDU [1] IPO [1] NO_ESTBLS [1] RBH [3] CR [1] TRUSTED [1] NOTIFY_IL [1] NOTIFY_NL [1] DISABLE_NL [1] DISABLE_IL [1] DONT_FWD [1] INDEX_DIRECT [1] DONT_LEARN [1] COND_LEARN [1] BUNDLE_BYPASS [1] QOS_TIC [1] INBAND [1] IGNORE_QOSO [1] IGNORE_QOSI [1] IGNORE_ACLO [1] IGNORE_ACLI [1] PORT_QOS [1] CACHE_CNTRL [2] VLAN [12] SRC_FLOOD [1] SRC_INDEX [19] LEN [16] FORMAT [2] MPLS_EXP [3] REC [1] NO_STATS [1] VPN_INDEX [10] PACKET_TYPE [3] L3_PROTOCOL [4] L3_PT [8] MPLS_TTL [8] SRC_XTAG [4] DEST_XTAG [4] FF [1] Continue reading

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Network Configuration: The Case for Normalization

I’ve had network configuration tools and protocols on my mind for the last few weeks. Everyone’s got some hot new API or configuration protocol - and on the outside looking in, it’s easy to assume that they’re all just different flavors of the same general concept - network configuration. So are they basically competing standards (VHS vs Betamax, anyone?)? Or is there a method to this madness? Just to name a few, OVSDB and Netconf are actually established JSON-RPC and XML-RPC (respectively) based standardized formats for accomplishing network configuration on the wire, rather than chase down each vendor’s individual XML/JSON API.

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Network Configuration: The Case for Normalization

I’ve had network configuration tools and protocols on my mind for the last few weeks. Everyone’s got some hot new API or configuration protocol - and on the outside looking in, it’s easy to assume that they’re all just different flavors of the same general concept - network configuration. So are they basically competing standards (VHS vs Betamax, anyone?)? Or is there a method to this madness? Just to name a few, OVSDB and Netconf are actually established JSON-RPC and XML-RPC (respectively) based standardized formats for accomplishing network configuration on the wire, rather than chase down each vendor’s individual XML/JSON API.

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Server Brawn + Switch Brains = Infrastructure Fabric

Last week I attended Networking Field Day 7, and was introduced to Pluribus Networks. Pluribus is taking an interesting approach to building the data center fabric, by combining high-performance data center top-of-rack (ToR) switching with powerful server internals in a platform they’ve dubbed the Freedom Server-Switch.

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Show 181 – Intro to I2RS with Joel Halpern & Russ White

Traditionally, routing protocols running on a router will perform calculations to determine the best forwarding path. The RIB with be then populated with next-hop information. Ultimately, that information will be populated into the FIB (forwarding information base), the FIB taking the guesswork of how to get to the next hop and easing CPU utilization on […]

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The post Show 181 – Intro to I2RS with Joel Halpern & Russ White appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Ethan Banks.

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Using IPMI Serial-over-LAN for server consoles

I’ve been trying to learn linux networking and virtualisation using a donated server in a remote lab. The server didn’t have an IP-KVM attached but it did have a working IPMI connection. Not that I’d need it of course; I … Continue reading →

The post Using IPMI Serial-over-LAN for server consoles appeared first on The Network Sherpa.

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Orhan Ergun CCDE Story

Once I decided for the CCDE exam I was thinking it is a hard challenge but surprisingly I will say it is not as much as you think.This is good news and you started to smile ? Hope once you finished the article you continue to it     Yes it is not since I […]

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The post Orhan Ergun CCDE Story appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Orhan Ergun.

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Embedded Packet Capture, let’s go fishing for some packets!

EPC (Embedded Packet Capture) is another useful troubleshooting tool to occasionally capture traffic to be analyzed locally or exported to remote device. Occasionally, in contrast with RITE (Router IP Traffic Export) or SPAN on switches which are meant to have permanent flow of copied traffic directed to a traffic analyzer or IDS (Intrusion Detection System). […]

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Avoiding Bogus Alerts Using AWS-Based Proxies & Outsourced BGP for Distributed Monitoring

Jeff Behl, Chief Network Architect with LogicMonitor, is our guest author for this post. Jeff has been in the IT industry for over 20 years.  He has an extensive background on architecting enterprise networks and data centers and brings real world knowledge around network operations from start-ups to enterprise companies. These companies range from UC […]

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The post Avoiding Bogus Alerts Using AWS-Based Proxies & Outsourced BGP for Distributed Monitoring appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Sponsored Blog Posts.

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DEW: SP Design in Jakarta – March 2014!

The final installment of DEW trilogy will happen in Jakarta, 15-16 March 2014!

After the first Design Expert Weekend in Riyadh focusing on IPv4/IPv6 Routing Design, the second DEW in Dubai for MPLS/Tunneling Design, the third and last DEW will be held in Jakarta, Indonesia, for Service Provider Design.

Please note: this is NOT a free event. I'm going to visit several universities in Indonesia to share my knowledge and experience during the same week. The profits we make from this DEW will be used to fund my trip. If you have to fly from outside Indonesia to attend this, we will provide all the food and accommodation during the weekend.

What:
Design Expert Weekend in Jakarta on 15-16 March will focus on Service Provider Design. Agenda will cover:

- Physical Network Design
- Layer 2 Design
- IGP/MPLS/BGP/Multicast as Transport
- MPLS Based Services L3VPN, L2VPN
- Internet Services
- IPTV Services
- High Availability Design
- SP QoS Design
- Security and Management
- CCDE exam tips and tricks
- CCDE sample questions and scenario to practice ability to analyze design requirements, develop network designs, implement network design, validate and optimize network design

The other two DEW are Continue reading

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Are certifications tests still worth your resources in the day of Hybrid IT?

Let me start by laying out this disclaimer:  This is in no way intended to devalue or criticize any vendor or vendor neutral certified folks or programs. Since the mid-1990s I’ve done many certification programs. In fact, I’ve actually lost track and  I can’t even remember them all, so this is not a commentary by someone […]

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My Dotfiles. Now on Github

Dotfiles are all those . files that sit in your ~ and customize your system. Here are mine.

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My Dotfiles. Now on Github

Dotfiles are all those . files that sit in your ~ and customize your system. Here are mine.

Until a few weeks ago I had no idea that people hosted their dotfiles on GitHub, and now I am one of them... There are two reasons for this:

1. For sharing awesome customizations with the community
2. As a backup plan. I can now clone this repo and customize a new system.

To point 2, I've gone one step further than just including my dotfiles. I've also included all of my system customizations and installers for the packages I use most. Why a new repository and not a fork you might ask? The honest answer is that there wasn't one repo that fit my tastes well enough so I ended up taking what I considered to be the "best" elements from a number of other repos. This is still a work-in-progress and I am comitting changes every time I find somehting new and exciting, or tire of a specific setting.

What I like about my dotfiles:

• Uses the Base16 Ocean theme
• Nicely Organised
  • Top-level folder for each function
  • Files with extension .symlink are symlinked to the home folder
• Multi-Platform MakeFile-based installer
  • Each folder can Continue reading

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The next fashion

By now just about everyone has realized that OpenFlow is just vaporware. Technically, there was never any content behind the hype. The arguments used to promote OpenFlows revolutionary properties where simply the ignorance of all previous technologies that used the exact same design ideas from SS7 to PBB-TE.

Rumor has it that even the most religious OpenFlow supporters from Mountain View to Tokyo have realized that OpenFlow is pretty much dead. If you look back at it, it was a pretty silly set of assumptions to start with: that hardware design and not software the the limiting factor in network devices; and that you can define a low-level forwarding language based on the concept of a TCAM match that is going to be efficient across general purpose CPUs; ASICs and NPUs. Both assumptions can easily be proven to be false.

But OpenFlow’s promise was “too good to be true”. So a lot of people preferred to ignore any hard questions in search of the illusory promises of a revolution in networking. By now though, everyone gets it.

As an industry, what is the expected reaction to the OpenFlow hangover ? One would expect a more down-to-earth approach. Instead we get “Segment Continue reading

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A NetOps to DevOps Training Plan

In one of my rants, I asked people to kindly stop with the "All Network Guys will Need to be Programmers" FUD. My recommendation was basically for Networkers to be open to change, and to start broadening their horizons. DevOps is coming to networking and that is a FACT. You might be wondering what skills a Network DevOps Engineer needs and here I attempt to answer that.

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A NetOps to DevOps Training Plan

In one of my rants, I asked people to kindly stop with the "All Network Guys will Need to be Programmers" FUD. My recommendation was basically for Networkers to be open to change, and to start broadening their horizons. DevOps is coming to networking and that is a FACT. You might be wondering what skills a Network DevOps Engineer needs and here I attempt to answer that.

It's still about NETWORKING

I'm going to state this upfront here. You need to be good at Networking for any of the other skills here to be useful. Continue along vendor certification tracks, follow the IETF, join NANOG, experiment with new technologies. This is all invaluable.

Software Engineering Fundamentals

A lot of the DevOps skills have roots in Software Engineering. Being a Network Guy ™ this may seem like a little bit of a paradigm shift but here's something cool. Would you believe that some of these software engineering concepts have more to do with engineering best practice than with software, and are in fact relevant to the work you are doing today? Also, your SysAdmin buddies already know this and started their DevOps pilgrimage a while ago.

Unit/Functional/Integration Testing, Version Control, Agile, Continue reading

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Selecting Shapes by Layer

Selecting shapes and connectors one-by-one in Visio can be tedious, especially when working with large or repetitive drawings. If you've been drawing for a while, you've probably gotten the hang of selecting just the right subset of shapes using the rectangular select tool, and employing the control key to add or remove any outliers as desired. This can be time-consuming though, especially when you want to pick out just a few connectors from a jumble of criss-crossing lines.

Here's a trick to try next time you find yourself excessively control-clicking: Identify each logical group of shapes or connectors that you'll likely want to tweak, and bundle them up into to their own layer. You can then use Visio's "select by layer" option to grab them all at once later. Take the drawing below, for instance.

Continue reading · 6 comments