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Bare Metal Networking, Then and Now…

What a difference a year makes.

Just last year, bare metal networking was viewed as an aspiration for only mega-scale operators. A simple solution to enable any bare metal switch to operate any networking operating system was unavailable.

Original design manufacturers (ODMs) and bare metal networking vendors were relatively unknown entities. Pricing and product availability was obscure or difficult to ascertain. The supply chain for bare metal networking was non-existent. (You can read more about The Modern Networking Supply Chain and the Death of the Multiplier Effect.) Consequently, mega-scale operators deployed solutions, procured directly from ODMs in lots of hundreds to thousands.

Today, bare metal networking is available to the mass market around the world.

The Open Network Install Environment, ONIE, is a fundamental enabler to bare metal networking. ONIE is an Open Compute Project (OCP, pioneered by Facebook) initiative facilitating any network operating system to be installed (or removed) on any ONIE-based switch. Bare metal networking vendors have adopted ONIE en masse, simplifying operations for distributors and resellers with a minimum number of hardware SKUs, in parallel, making the simplified supply chain available to a range of software suppliers. Today, there are approximately 20 ONIE-based platforms in flexible Continue reading

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Multicast Rising

Multicast Rising

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by Steve Harriman, VP of Marketing - August 19, 2014

Multicast hasn’t been a hot topic in networking in recent years, but that may be changing with last week’s announcements by both AT&T and Verizon that they will launch LTE multicast in 2015. Verizon plans to start embedding the technology in phones in the fourth quarter of this year and commercially launch the service in 2015. AT&T will also begin to roll out multicast capabilities next year. 

According to Verizon CFO Fran Shammo, multicast is “…the pivotal point that starts to change the way content is delivered over a mobile handset which opens up content into the wireless world." 

As Humberto Saabedra explains in an article for PhoneNews.com: “LTE Multicast allows the same content to be sent to a large number of subscribers at the same time, resulting in a more efficient use of network resources than each user requesting the same content and then having the content individually streamed to each user.” 

Currently, organizations use multicast for multimedia distribution, desktop imaging, market trading data distribution, broadcast video, online education, and other purposes where data must be delivered simultaneously to multiple receivers. Packet Continue reading

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Do We Need To Redefine Open?

There’s a new term floating around that seems to be confusing people left and right.  It’s something that’s been used to describe a methodology as well as used in marketing left and right.  People are using it and don’t even really know what it means.  And this is the first time that’s happened.  Let’s look at the word “open” and why it has become so confusing.

Talking Beer

For those at home that are familiar with Linux, “open” wasn’t the first term to come to mind.  “Free” is another word that has been used in the past with a multitude of loaded meanings.  The original idea around “free” in relation to the Open Source movement is that the software is freely available.  There are no restrictions on use and the source is always available.  The source code for the Linux kernel can be searched and viewed at any time.

Free describes the fact that the Linux kernel is available for no cost.  That’s great for people that want to try it out.  It’s not so great for companies that want to try and build a business around it, yet Red Hat has managed to do just that.  How can they Continue reading

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A History of Load Balancing

A visual representation of the company and, to a lesser extent, product history of the load balancing/application delivery field. My usual F5 bias is present but it seems justified considering their long-held market leading position. I’ve been itching to post this for a while but simply couldn’t stop changing the formatting. I can’t say I’m […]

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The post A History of Load Balancing appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Steven Iveson.

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DIY Web Server: Raspberry Pi + CloudFlare

The Raspberry Pi was created with a simple mission in mind: change the way people interact with computers. This inexpensive, credit card-sized machine is encouraging people, especially kids, to start playing with computers, not on them.

When the first computers came out, basic programming skills were necessary. This was the age of the Amigas, BBC Micros, the Spectrum ZX, and Commodore 64s. The generation that grew up with these machines gained a fundamental understanding how how computers work.

Computers today are easy to use and require zero understanding of programming to operate. They’re also expensive, and wrapped in sleek cases. While aesthetically pleasing designs and user friendly interfaces make computers appealing and accessible to everyone, these advances create a barrier to understanding how computers work and what they are capable of doing. This isn’t necessarily a problem, but for those who really understand computers, it seems that our collective sense of the power of computing has been dulled.

Raspberry Pi marks the beginning of a conscious effort to return to computing fundamentals. Starting at about $25—case not included—it’s purposely designed to remove barriers to tinkering, reprograming, and, ultimately, to understanding how computers work. This return to fundamentals is rejuvenating the Continue reading

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Revisited: Layer-2 DCI over VXLAN

I’m still getting questions about layer-2 data center interconnect; it seems this particular bad idea isn’t going away any time soon. In the face of that sad reality, let’s revisit what I wrote about layer-2 DCI over VXLAN.

VXLAN hasn’t changed much since the time I explained why it’s not the right technology for long-distance VLANs.

Read more ...

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CloudFlare hiring Go programmers in London and San Francisco

Are you familiar with the Go programming language and looking for a job in San Francisco or London? Then think about applying to CloudFlare. We're looking for people with experience writing Go in both locations.

CC BY-SA 2.0 by Yuko Honda (cropped, resized)

CloudFlare uses Go extensively to build our service and we need to people to build and maintain those systems. We've written a complete DNS server in Go, our Railgun service is all Go and we're moving more and more systems to Go programs.

We've recently written about our open source Red October Go project for securing secrets, and open-sourced our CFSSL Go-based PKI package. Go is now making its way into our data pipeline and be used for processing huge amounts of data.

We even have a Go-specific section on our GitHub.

If you're interested in working in Go on a high-performance global network like CloudFlare, send us an email.

Not into Go? We're hiring for all sorts of other positions and technologies.

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Building a router with Open vSwitch

As part of my work in OpenDaylight, we are looking at creating a router using Open vSwitch... Why? Well OpenStack requires some limited L3 capabilities and we think that we can handle those in a distributed router.

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The Khan Academy of Hyperscale Open Infrastructure

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Blame the System For Resisting Change – Not The People

I often hear vendors and pundits proclaim that Enterprise is resisting change. In particular, they say that individuals in Enterprises can't see the change or won't discuss buying new technology. I see these objections as failure of the current system and much less due to the people.

The post Blame the System For Resisting Change – Not The People appeared first on EtherealMind.

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Tinfoil Security vulnerability scanning now easy in CloudFlare Apps

We’re pleased to introduce a new CloudFlare App: Tinfoil Security. Tinfoil Security is a service designed to find possible web application vulnerabilities.

Security is central to CloudFlare's service. Our security features operate at the network level to identify and block malicious traffic from ever reaching your website or application. However, even with that protection in place, it’s still worth fixing problems at the application layer as well.

Tinfoil Security helps website owners learn about possible vulnerabilities in their applications by scanning for vulnerabilities, tests all access points, and providing step-by-step introductions on eliminating threats if found.

Their developer-focused reports can be tied into continuous integration lifecycle with API hooks for kicking off new scans after changes are made.

Tinfoil offers several price points, including a free plan that checks for XSS (Cross-Site Scripting) concerns. The Tinfoil app is a quick and easy addition to your CloudFlare service. Take a look!

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Common Network Design Concepts Part-1

There are design tools which we should consider for every design. LAN, WAN and the data center where these common design tolls and attributes should be considered. Many of the principles in this article series might be fit not only for the network part of the design  but also compute, virtualization and storage technologies also […]

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The post Common Network Design Concepts Part-1 appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Orhan Ergun.

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Do you really need to see all 512K Internet routes?

Last week the global routing table (as seen from some perspectives) supposedly exceeded 512K routes, and weird things started to happen to some people that are using old platforms that by default support 512K IPv4 routes in the switching hardware.

I’m still wondering whether the BGP table size was the root cause of the observed outages. Cisco’s documentation (at least this document) is pretty sloppy when it comes to the fact that usually 1K = 1024, not 1000 – I’d expect the hard limit to be @ 524.288 routes … but then maybe Cisco’s hardware works with decimal arithmetic.

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Show 201 – Internet Dies at 512K, Long Live the Internet

The Internet has Died at 512K routes. Ethan & Greg discuss some news and events of the last few weeks and nod nerdishly while noodling about nothing. Yeah, it's a nerd chat show this week.

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The post Show 201 – Internet Dies at 512K, Long Live the Internet appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Greg Ferro.

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FC vs FCoE

FC vs FCoE infrastructure, usually a common debate when designing the network infrastructure of a new Data Center or new part of a Data Center, after all the advantages of running a converged storage & IP network are hard to turn down. Many of us are probably already aware of the why FCoE is always […]

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Using the OSPF Forwarding Address for traffic-steering

In this fairly short post, id like to address a topic that came up on IRC (#cciestudy @ freenode.net). Its about how you select a route thats being redistributed into an OSPF NSSA area and comes into the OSPF backbone area 0.

For my post i will be using the very simple topology below. Nothing else is necessary to illustrate what is going on.

First off, id like to clarify a few things about what takes place when redistributing routes into an NSSA area.

What happens is that you have an external network, 4.4.4.4/32 in our example. This is _not_ part of the current area 1. When this network is being redistributed into area 1, its forwarding address will be set to the highest active interface of the redistributing router in the area (R4 in our case). The highest interface in the area local to the router is Loopback100 with an address of 44.44.44.44/32.

*A reader noted that a loopback address will beat a physical interface even if it has a lower address. This is true and goes for OSPF in general. Thanks!

Lets verify the configuration on R4 and the result of Continue reading

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Optimized Roaming, RSSI Low Check, RX-SOP, Oh My!

In the Cisco landscape today, there are three features that usually come up in the same conversation. They all solve what I'd call "related" problems, but are not the same. They are incredibly useful features and do share one thing in common...you must know your RF environment before implementing them. I'll provide use-cases and examples below, but it should be noted that in the case of "Optimized Roaming", this is based on public information currently available and could change prior to the WLC AirOS version 8.0 release.

Optimized Roaming

The problem:
The well known "sticky client" issue. For the uninitiated, when a client refuses to roam to an assumedly "better" AP (closer, stronger RSSI, better SNR etc.) that client is being "sticky". Why is this bad? Consider the following example of a lecture hall: As the client enters the room, it associates to AP-1. As it moves farther away from AP-1 it's RSSI gets weaker, SNR gets worse, retransmissions occur, dynamic rate-shifting happens, and you end up with a client communicating at a much lower data-rate. Lower data-rate consumes more air-time to transfer the same information, resulting in higher channel utilization. Ideally, the client would roam to Continue reading

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400k Views in 4 Years – A Review of My Last 4 Years

Very often in our lives we are fully focused on what is going to happen in the
future. We rarely look back at what we have done and how we got to where we
are now. People that know me, know that I’m a very focused person that is always
looking to improve my skillset.

In July of 2010 I decided that I wanted to become a CCIE. I was a CCNP at that
time and I was working in a role where I did 2nd level support. I decided that
I wanted to blog to keep my notes for the CCIE online. I wrote my first blog
post on July 16, 2010. Today on August 16, 2014, almost four years later I passed
400k views on the blog. It’s been an amazing journey and here is a look back at
what has happened since then. This post is meant to be inspirational, to see
what can be accomplished in four years if you put your heart to it, please don’t
take it as boasting :)

For my CCIE studies I used INE workbooks, I decided that it would be good practice
to answer questions on their forums to keep Continue reading

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CPUG, and The Risk of Single-Admin Communities

CPUG, a Check Point user forum, is near death. The owner has been forced to get rid of it, but rather doing a graceful handover, it has been shut down pending a possible sale. This is a great shame, and it highlights the risks of contributing to a forum controlled by a single person.

CPUG.org started out as an independent Check Point forum in around 2005. It was seeded with Phoneboy’s original FW–1 FAQs, and quickly became the premier independent source of Check Point information. If you had a Check Point problem, chances were you could get a quick answer there.

I used to do a lot of Check Point work, and so I knew a fair bit about it. I had the time, knowledge, and the desire to help the community, so I got involved with CPUG, and became a top contributor. I put a huge amount of effort into it over the years, and hopefully I helped solve a few people’s problems. I have moved away from contributing recently, for various reasons.

At its best, the forum was a fantastic resource, where many of the smartest people were working to help solve the trickiest issues. It became Continue reading

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Host-MLAG: Don’t Let a Switch Bring Down Your Servers

How do you protect against failures in a data center? Selecting a stable location and using quality equipment is a good start.

But no matter how much you spend and how lofty the promises of the vendor, hardware does fail. And because systems do inevitably fail, redundancy is your friend when it comes to minimizing the impact of a failure. Systems have redundant power supplies and fans. The connections between systems are redundant. The systems themselves are redundant. And in some cases entire data centers are redundant in different geographical locations.

With the release of Cumulus Linux 2.2, there is now an open solution for redundant layer 2 top of rack, or ToR, switches. No longer will a single ToR switch failure take out your entire rack of servers. This is because Cumulus Linux 2.2 includes Host-MLAG, which allows servers to connect to redundant ToR switches using active-active LACP bonding. Some of the advantages of Host-MLAG include:

• Unlike a single ToR solution, with Host-MLAG, the failure of one ToR switch still provides full connectivity to all of the servers.
• With active-active connections to the ToRs, the bandwidth to and from the servers is doubled.
• Host-MLAG requires no special Continue reading