Comparing and Contrasting SDN Across the Pond

Comparing and Contrasting SDN Across the Pond

by Steve Harriman, VP of Marketing - April 8, 2014

How do the U.S. and Europe compare on SDN? To find out, we just replicated a survey we conducted in the U.S. last year. At the MPLS SDN World Congress in Paris a few weeks ago, we polled more than 100 service providers and equipment providers (mostly based in the EU) about their SDN plans, business drivers and concerns. Added to the U.S.-based survey of 100, the results show many similarities as well as some interesting differences. 

Production SDN Deployment Lower in Europe 

More than 90 percent of the 200+ respondents to the two surveys said their organizations are exploring SDN in some way. However, while 74 percent of the EU-based respondents said their organizations are either researching or prototyping SDN, only about eight percent said they currently have some production deployment. This compares to 20 percent of the U.S. survey respondents who indicated some production deployment (with 62 percent either researching or prototyping SDN). 

The percentage planning to deploy production SDN in either this year or in 2015 was similar for both sets, with eight Continue reading

The Learning Curve: Implementations vs Fundamentals

I’ve spent a lot of time lately considering skillsets, and how people go about learning new things. Many aspects of the IT industry are starting to overlap with each other (the idea of DevOps being just one manifestation) and it’s incredibly interesting to see how individual professionals are incorporating new knowledge into their repertoire. I did a little contemplation on this over the weekend and I’d like to share some observations I’ve made.

The Learning Curve: Implementations vs Fundamentals

I’ve spent a lot of time lately considering skillsets, and how people go about learning new things. Many aspects of the IT industry are starting to overlap with each other (the idea of DevOps being just one manifestation) and it’s incredibly interesting to see how individual professionals are incorporating new knowledge into their repertoire. I did a little contemplation on this over the weekend and I’d like to share some observations I’ve made.

SRX – “VPN monitoring” causes IPSec to bounce

Just making a note here because this will probably trip me up again in the future:   I have a customer with a VPN running from an SRX650 on 11.4R9.4 to a variety of other devices.  One of these is some kind of Huawei device, and the other a Vyatta router.  I’ve no idea what versions or models these are because they’re not under the customer’s control.

I noticed that these two VPNs didn’t appear to be staying up.  You could tell because of the lifetime of the IPSec security association.  It is set in the configuration to 1800 seconds and counts  down – when it gets near zero, the SA is re-negotiated.   In this case however, the SA never dropped much below 1400 seconds remaining before being renegotiated. 

You can see this by issuing the command “show security ipsec sa” and looking at the fourth column to see the lifetime remaining.  If you specify the index number you get more detail as can be seen below:

user@LON-SRX650> show security ipsec sa index 12
ID: 12 Virtual-system: root, VPN Name: VPN-1
Local Gateway: x.x.x.x, Remote Gateway: y.y.y. Continue reading

Press Release: Results of Cross-Continent SDN Survey

American and European service providers agree on SDN benefits and challenges with key differences

U.S. and European service providers share similar SDN business drivers and challenges, but Europe has a lower deployment rate and is more concerned about reducing costs as well as managing the technology. These are the main results of a Packet Design survey of more than 200 network service providers on both continents. The company polled more than 100 service providers and equipment providers at the 2014 MPLS SDN World Congress in Paris last month (more than half of the respondents were based in Europe). This adds to the results of the survey of 100 service providers Packet Design conducted at the 16th annual MPLS/SDN International Conference in Washington, D.C. last November.

Key Findings:  

  • More than 90 percent of the 200+ survey respondents are exploring SDN in some way. However, only eight percent of EU-based respondents said they currently have some production deployment compared to 20 percent of the U.S. survey respondents.  
  • Both geographies indicated the same SDN business drivers: support new services, increase business agility, and improve productivity. Europe is more concerned about reducing expenditures: More than one-third of European respondents Continue reading

DDoS mitigation hybrid OpenFlow controller

Performance optimizing hybrid OpenFlow controller describes the growing split in the SDN controller market between edge controllers using virtual switches to deliver network virtualization (e.g. VMware NSX, Nuage Networks, Juniper Contrail, etc.) and fabric controllers that optimize performance of the physical network. The article provides an example using InMon's sFlow-RT controller to detect and mark large "elephant" flows so that they don't interfere with latency sensitive small "mice" flows.

This article describes an additional example, using the sFlow-RT controller to implement the ONS 2014 SDN Idol winning distributed denial of service (DDoS) mitigation solution - Real-time SDN Analytics for DDoS mitigation.
Figure 1: ISP/IX Market Segment
Figure 1 shows how service providers are ideally positioned to mitigate large flood attacks directed at their customers. The mitigation solution involves an SDN controller that rapidly detects and filters out attack traffic and protects the customer's Internet access.
Figure 2: Novel DDoS Mitigation solution using Real-time SDN Analytics
Figure 2 shows the elements of the control system in the SDN Idol demonstration. The addition of an embedded OpenFlow controller in sFlow-RT allows the entire DDoS mitigation system to be collapsed into the following sFlow-RT JavaScript application:
// Define large flow  Continue reading

Quiz #23 – QoS on IPsec Tunnels

Type: Lab Difficulty: Advanced Company ABC runs a static VTI-based VPN tunnel between Site-1, hosting 192.168.1.1, and Site-2, hosting 192.168.5.5. BGP is configured between the two sites, over the VTI Tunnel, making all traffic between the sites to be encrypted/protected by IPsec. A new requirement is received from the customer, asking that all traffic from 192.168.1.1 (in Site-1) to 192.168.2.2 (in Site-2) must be prioritized. The network engineer creates the... [read more]

Quiz #23 &#8211 QoS on IPsec Tunnels

Company ABC runs a static VTI-based VPN tunnel between Site-1, hosting 192.168.1.1, and Site-2, hosting 192.168.5.5. BGP is configured between the two sites, over the VTI Tunnel, making all traffic between the sites to be encrypted/protected by IPsec. The network engineer tries to configure QoS but something does not work !...

BFD in the new Avatar

 

BFDWe all love Bi-directional Forwarding Detection (BFD) and cant possibly imagine our lives without it. We love it so much that we were ready with sabers and daggers drawn when we approached IEEE to let BFD control the individual links inside a LAG — something thats traditionally done by LACP.

Having done that, you would imagine that people would have settled down for a while (after their small victory dance of course) — but no, not the folks in the BFD WG. We are now working on a new enhancement that really takes BFD to the next level.

There isnt anything egregiously wrong or missing per se in BFD today. Its just not very optimal in certain scenarios and we’re trying to plug those holes (and doing our bit to ensure that folks in data comm industry have ample work and remain perennially employed).

Ok, lets not be modest – there are some scenarios where it doesnt work (as we shall see).

So what are we fixing here?

Slow Start

Well for one, BFD takes awfully looooong to bring up the session. Remember BFD starts with sedate timers and then slowly picks up (each side needs to come to an agreement on the rate at Continue reading

Whats next…

I have a lot of non-technical related projects in the pipeline, but study wise, whats next up for me is the IOS XR specialist exam.

I think the blueprint for it looks interesting and it provides a way for me to learn more about IOS XR.

I don’t really have a date for the exam just yet as I’m taking it easy and trying to lab out as much as i can to have it stick.

I will be posting about anything i find interesting or different from Classic IOS. Right now I’m trying to figure out the details on the LPTS implemented on XR platforms. A way of protecting the management/control plane of the router.

Take care!

Why You Should Learn to Code

I took a few C++ and Visual Basic courses back in high shcool. Now, at that time, they didn’t teach the STL (Standard Template Library), I remember using conio.h allot...

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Impact of the FCC 5 GHz U-NII Report & Order on Wi-Fi Networks

Following the news release of the FCC's actions to change some technical rules for the 5 GHz U-NII bands, the official Report and Order was released on Tuesday.

I've read through the R&O, and here are the technical modifications that were approved:
  • U-NII 1 band (5.150 - 5.250 GHz) indoor operation restriction is removed. This allows use of the band for outdoor hotspots, WISPs, and bridge links. The growth of public hotspots will clearly benefit from this change.

  • U-NII 1 band (5.150 - 5.250 GHz) power level restrictions are changed. 
  • AP power levels at the Intentional Radiator may be 1W (previously 50mW) and the EIRP may be 4W using a 6dBi antenna (previously 200mW), and following the 1dB reduction rule in transmitter power for every 1dB of antenna gain above 6dBi. 
  • Client power levels at the IR may be 250mW and the EIRP may be 1W, following the 1:1 dB reduction rule for antenna gain above 6dBi.
  • WISPs may use up to 23dBi antennas on fixed point-to-point links without any corresponding reduction in transmitter power.

    These changes help to unify the U-NII 1 band with the U-NII 2A/2C and U-NII 3 bands so Continue reading

Learn to Code

Background I took a few C++ and Visual Basic courses back in high shcool. Now, at that time, they didn’t teach the STL (Standard Template Library), I remember using conio.h allot, not really...

[[ Summary content only, you can read everything now, just visit the site for full story ]]

Learn to Code

Background I took a few C++ and Visual Basic courses back in high shcool. Now, at that time, they didn’t teach the STL (Standard Template Library), I remember using conio.h allot, not really...

[[ Summary content only, you can read everything now, just visit the site for full story ]]

Learn to Code

Background I took a few C++ and Visual Basic courses back in high shcool. Now, at that time, they didn’t teach the STL (Standard Template Library), I remember using conio.h allot, not really...

[[ Summary content only, you can read everything now, just visit the site for full story ]]

Cisco, ACI, OpFlex and OpenDaylight

Cisco's April 2nd, 2014 announcement - Cisco and Industry Leaders Will Deliver Open, Multi-Vendor, Standards-Based Networks for Application Centric Infrastructure with OpFlex Protocol - has drawn mixed reviews from industry commentators.

In, Cisco Submits Its (Very Different) SDN to IETF & OpenDaylight, SDNCentral editor Craig Matsumoto comments, "You know how, early on, people were all worried Cisco would 'take over' OpenDaylight? This is pretty much what they were talking about. It’s not a 'takeover,' literally, but OpFlex and the group policy concept steer OpenDaylight into a new direction that it otherwise wouldn’t have, one that Cisco happens to already have taken."

CIMI Corp. President, Tom Nolle, remarks "We’re all in business to make money, and if Cisco takes a position in a key market like SDN that seems to favor…well…doing nothing much different, you have to assume they have good reason to believe that their approach will resonate with buyers." - Cisco’s OpFlex: We Have Sound AND Fury

This article will look at some of the architectural issues raised by Cisco's announcement based on the following documents:
The diagram at the top of this article illustrates the Continue reading

Parsing a Routing Table with Python – Part 2

In the previous article (they’re split to make them easier to read) I talked about the theory and representation. How a properly formatted data structure and a non-formatted data structure look like....

[[ Summary content only, you can read everything now, just visit the site for full story ]]

Parsing a Routing Table with Python – Part 2

In the previous article (they’re split to make them easier to read) I talked about the theory and representation. How a properly formatted data structure and a non-formatted data structure look like....

[[ Summary content only, you can read everything now, just visit the site for full story ]]
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