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Big Cloud Fabric: Scaling OpenFlow Fabric

I’m still convinced that architectures with centralized control planes (and that includes solutions relying on OpenFlow controllers) cannot scale. On the other hand, Big Switch Networks is shipping Big Cloud Fabric, and they claim they solved the problem. Obviously I wanted to figure out what’s going on and Andy Shaw and Rob Sherwood were kind enough to explain the interesting details of their solution.

Long story short: Big Switch Networks significantly extended OpenFlow.

Read more ...

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Containers – Docker, LXC and Rocket

This blog is part of my ongoing series on Docker containers. In my previous blog, I covered LXC. When I tried out LXC, I realized that there are lots of similarities between Docker and LXC. Also, I saw a recent announcement about Rocket which is another Container runtime technology. In this blog, I have tried … Continue reading Containers – Docker, LXC and Rocket →

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LXC Containers

This blog is part of my ongoing series on Docker containers. In this blog, I will take a deviation from Docker and focus on LXC. LXC manages Containers like Docker, there are some differences, I will cover the differences in a later blog. LXC is an Opensource Linux container project from Linuxcontainers.org that provides an user space … Continue reading LXC Containers →

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CCIE Renewed – Exam 400-101

The problem with obtaining certifications is that you need to renew them. CCIE is no different – I first passed the lab in September 2012, and I was overdue for renewing it. I’m pleased to report that I have now done that, and it is now current until September 2016. Here’s some of my impressions of the 400-101 exam.

I had planned on using the CCDE written exam to renew my R&S CCIE, and then decide if I would go on to attempt the CCDE practical exam. But it seems that the CCDE exam writers and I just don’t share the same mindset. I tried, but it wasn’t working for me, and I wasn’t making progress. So I went back to R&S for my re-cert.

New Blueprint

I originally passed version 4, exam number 350-101. This has been updated to version 5. The written exam is now 400-101. Of course, this doesn’t mean that everything changes. Core L2 & L3 protocols don’t change that much. BGP, OSPF and EIGRP and still BGP, OSPF and EIGRP.

There are some key changes though, such as:

• Frame relay gone, DMVPN in
• IS-IS back in – theory only
• New EIGRP features, such as named mode
• More MPLS Continue reading

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Last Chapter of Data Center Design Case Studies Is Published

A few days ago I completed the last chapter in the Data Center Design Case Studies book: building disaster recovery and active-active data centers. It focuses on application behavior and business needs, not on the underlying technologies; the networking technology part tends to be way easier to solve than the oft-ignored application-level challenges.

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PQ Show 45 – Talking About PR & Marketing

I was lucky enough to attend the Powering the Cloud Conference in October last year. While I was there I say down with  Federica Monsone from A3 Communications to talk about the role of PR, Marketing and Social media. While we poke fun at marketing it is a deadly serious business. We need our vendors […]

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The post PQ Show 45 – Talking About PR & Marketing appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Greg Ferro.

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Happy Birthday SR629007199!

It is with disappointment and frustration that I'm celebrating the 1st birthday of an unresolved Cisco support case. I'm not happy about it, plan to do some complaining in this post.

Now, don't get me wrong, I think the people at Cisco TAC are great. They're an absolutely first class support organization, the standard by which other vendors are judged, and they consistently give me great service.

In spite of their efforts, sometimes things just don't work out. This is one of those times.

I opened SR629007199 on January 31st 2014 after noticing a peculiar problem with an ISR G2 router: Servers couldn't receive packets intended for them because the router was screwing up their traffic. The Ethernet frames carrying these packets included the wrong destination MAC address, so the servers ignored them.

Specifically, the router was screwing up the IP->L2 address mapping required for IPv4 multicast packets. Instead of using 23 bits of the multicast group in the L2 header, that portion of the L2 header was all zeros. It looked like this:

Bogus dMAC on most of these frames

Those two HSRP packets originated by the router looked okay, and traffic from local sources was okay, but every Continue reading

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Securing Your Connection Anywhere You Go

We all know that there are a lot of incomplete security models. Firesheep made this fact painfully obvious to those who regularly work from public hotspots. Although this issue extends beyond insecure wireless deployments, unencrypted hotspots are an easy target. When network traffic isn’t secured in the application layers AND that same traffic is not secured in the network or datalink layers, bad things can and do happen.

TLDR–This article solves this problem by utilizing a Meraki MX60 and the VPN client Native on OSX. To skip to the good stuff, click here.

One approach that some people decide to employ is utilizing a VPN connection for their Internet traffic when connected to untrusted networks. For years, enterprises have utilized these controls to allow secure access to corporate resources. A common trend to day includes utilizing “the cloud” for sensitive enterprise and personal data. While these systems *should* be appropriate resilient, we know that is not always the case. In addition to that, federated authentication schemes and password reuse can also pose additional risk to broken systems and less security conscious users.

Having easy access to some gear, I have been using a Meraki MX60 for a few months. This device makes the configuration Continue reading

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Performance Enhancements with KVM on GNS3/Linux

I have been recently intrigued by the lack of performance enhancement brought by KVM to the ASA in GNS3 1.2.3 on Ubuntu 14.10 with Qemu

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iPexpert’s Newest “CCIE Wall of Fame” Additions 1/30/2015

Please join us in congratulating the following iPexpert client’s who have passed their CCIE lab!

This Week’s CCIE Success Stories

• Nouman Khan, CCIE #19730  (Data Center)
• Madhav Bhardwaj, CCIE #44772 (Collaboration)
• Theogene Nishimwe, CCIE #44776 (Collaboration)

We Want to Hear From You!

Have you passed your CCIE lab exam and used any of iPexpert’s self-study products, or attended a CCIE Bootcamp? If so, we’d like to add you to our CCIE Wall of Fame!

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Dell celebrates disaggregation’s first anniversary

Dell is celebrating the first anniversary of its Open Networking initiative, an effort to offer customers a choice of operating systems and applications on standard, merchant silicon-based hardware.Dell was one of, if not the first major vendor to disaggregate switching – separating the interdependencies of hardware and software so customers, in this case, can run a variety of operating systems on Dell switches. Juniper followed suit with an Open Compute Platform-based switch that can run its Junos operating system, or another that’s ported to the OCP-based hardware.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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PlexxiPulse—Partnering with Cloudera

This week, we announced that we’ve partnered with Big Data platform provider Cloudera. Cloudera’s data management platform enables enterprises to use Apache’s open source Hadoop software to better manage their data. The Plexxi Switch, now certified with Cloudera’s Enterprise 5 platform, is the first SDN-based Ethernet switch and the only truly single-tier, scale-out networking solution. We’re excited to have Cloudera on board to provide network operators a solution to address their Big Data needs.

Below you will find our top picks for stories in the networking space this week. Have a great weekend!

In this week’s PlexxiTube of the week, our own Dan Backman identifies how Plexxi’s Big Data fabric solution applicable beyond Big Data.

TechTarget: SDN to support Internet of Things devices
By David Geer
Software-defined networking will meet the Internet of Things (IoT) at the crossroads of VPN exhaustion, uptime challenges and limited network resources. The expected result is that SDN will help drive the expansion of IoT-enabled devices, enable more efficient network resource sharing and improve IoT service-level agreements (SLAs). In return, many vendors expect IoT will support SDN decisions and feed hungry policy engines. It’s still early days in terms of looking for use cases Continue reading

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IDG Contributor Network: It’s my network and I’ll binge watch if I want to

In my first blog post I discussed the gap that exists between what consumers want and what the network can feasibly provide – what I referred to as the "agility gap." In just the four months since that post, we have seen a variety of new examples of the acceleration in technology advances for the consumer and end user, while the network chugs along trying to keep up.The most intriguing of these was Sony's unveiling of PlayStation Now at CES 2015, a cloud-based gaming subscription service that gives players unlimited streaming access to more than 100 games.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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Thanks Michael!

3 years ago, Michael DeHaan started the Ansible open source project. Michael has worked tirelessly and done a great job leading the Ansible vision of simple IT automation, and his efforts led to some amazing achievements.  Ansible is now a mature open source project and vibrant community, with over 900 contributors (a new contributor almost every day!), thousands of users and millions of downloads.  Ansible was recently named a Top 10 Open Source project for 2014, alongside projects like Hadoop, Docker, and OpenStack.

As of today, Michael will be transitioning from his daily operational involvement with Ansible, Inc. to an advisory capacity supporting the community and the Ansible team as needed.  You can read more about Michael’s thoughts on the transition here.

As for Ansible, we are grateful for Michael’s vision and efforts and look forward to his continued contributions. He and the Ansible community have set a new standard for simple, agentless automation, and we will continue to build great things on that strong foundation.

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Thinking Out Loud: Does Docker on Windows Matter?

Nigel Poulton recently posted an article titled “ESXi vs. Hyper-V - Could Docker Support Be Significant,” in which he contemplates whether Microsoft’s announcement of Docker support on Windows will be a factor in the hypervisor battle between ESXi and Hyper-V. His post got me thinking—which is a good thing, I’d say—and I wanted to share my thoughts on the topic here.

Naturally, it’s worth pointing out that I work for VMware, although I do work in a business unit that makes a multi-hypervisor product (NSX).

Nigel makes a few key points in his article:

• Open source is “where it’s at today”
• Everyone “is crazy with container fever”
• VMware “ditched” Linux in the transition to ESXi
• Microsoft’s support for Docker means Microsoft might “ship a hypervisor platform (Windows Server/Hyper-V) that does VMs and Docker containers”
• Azure could be made more relevant in the public cloud race through “native support for Docker containers” resulting in “native Type-1 hypervisor, native Docker containers.”

To be completely fair, the article fully admits that all this is assumption and is just thinking out loud (his statement, not a play on the title of this post). As I said, I think it’s a good thing to Continue reading

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Network Break 26

We are back after the Christmas Break with the Networking News.

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The post Network Break 26 appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Greg Ferro.

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SDN: What Small and Mid-Sized Businesses Need to Know in 2015

Guest blogger Alex Hoff is the VP of Product Management at Auvik Networks, a cloud-based SaaS that makes it dramatically easier for small and mid-sized businesses to manage their networks. Our thanks to Auvik for sponsoring the Packet Pushers community blog today. It’s January and the network industry pundits are calling for 2015 to be the […]

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The post SDN: What Small and Mid-Sized Businesses Need to Know in 2015 appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Sponsored Blog Posts.

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Contention Delay Killed the WLAN Star

The Wi-Fi industry seems dominated by discussions on the ever-increasing bandwidth capabilities and peak speeds brought with the latest product offerings based on 802.11ac. But while industry marketing touts Gigabit capable peak speeds, the underlying factors affecting WLAN performance have changed little.

Medium contention is the true driver in the success or failure of a WLAN and we must effectively understand its effect on WLAN performance in order to design and optimize our networks.

Read the full blog article over on the Aruba Airheads Technology Blog...

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Open Networking: From Concept to Reality

When I first heard about Cumulus Networks in August 2013, I thought, “what’s the catch?” Now, after a year of working with companies deploying Cumulus Linux based switches in their production environments, it turns out there is really no catch. Open networking is for real.

The way you buy a server is now the way you can buy a switch

An open ecosystem has supported the server business for many years. One can build servers with components from various suppliers and run their choice of operating system. This same concept for the networking world, now called “open networking” for the disaggregated model of switch hardware and software, has long been on many wish lists.

The good news: this concept is a reality now, thanks to companies like Cumulus Networks whose OS, Cumulus Linux, is a Debian based distribution that is the OS for open networking on bare metal switches.

No License Gotchas

With Cumulus Linux, there are no additional or “enhanced” license fees akin to what traditional vendors have charged for years. The yearly renewal license fees cost the same each year – not a penny more. The yearly or multi-year license (option) can be ported from one switch Continue reading

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IPv6 availability in New Zealand

IPv6 has been around a fair while, and we’re constantly encouraged to learn it and use it. I agree with the sentiment, but it’s been hard for most users, when few ISPs offer IPv6 for residential users. Hurricane Electric offers a great free IPv6 tunnel broker service, but that’s impractical for most people. What they need is for their ISP to offer native IPv6, by default.

The ISPs in New Zealand with the largest market share don’t offer IPv6, but some of the smaller ones do. The design of the ISP market here means that users can easily switch between a large range of suppliers, and choose the mix of price/service they want. When I last changed ISP a couple of years ago, I specifically chose an ISP that offers IPv6.

Last year that ISP disabled IPv6 for a few weeks due to some technical issues, and I was disappointed with the support they offered. I wanted to evaluate my other options, but couldn’t find any good source of data that showed which ISPs were offering IPv6. There’s plenty of talk out there about trials, and the like, but most of that hasn’t been updated in years.

So I pulled Continue reading