interoperability testing

Recently, one customer prospect asked the Contrail team to build a POC lab using only non-Juniper network gear. The team managed to find a cisco ASR 900 as a loaner device and we had to make that device work as a data-center gateway.

Typically we use the Juniper MX as a the data-center gateway in our clusters. When you use an MX, the system somehow feels dated. It does feel like a 10+ year old design, which it is. But it is incredibly solid and feature rich. So one ends up accepting that it feels a bit dated as a tradeoff to its “swiss army knife” powers.

The cisco ASR 900 belongs to the 1k family and runs IOS as a user space process on Linux. I’d not used IOS in 3 years. My first impression was: this artifact belongs to the Computer History Museum. In fact the CHM (which is a fantastic museum) has several pieces in exhibition that are more recent that 1984, the year IOS debuted.

And IOS (even the version 15 in this loaner box) is a history trip. You get to see a routing table that precedes classes internet addresses, the config still outputs “bgp Continue reading

Leveraging Python on Network Devices to Monitor Interfaces in Realtime

In a recent post, I wrote about some Python work I was testing on the Nexus 3000.  The end conclusion was that open Linux platforms will offer more flexibility --- for the consumer of the technology, ultimately the customer.  In this post, we’ll take a look at an example that integrates Python with the native Linux operating system.  
In the context of networking, the question often arises, what does having access to Linux really gain you?  For one, as you can see from my last post and you’ll see in this one, for native scripting within bash and Python is of extreme value in itself, not to mention you’d also have the ability to load any piece of software you want to that is compatible with Linux (think about tools, mgmt/monitoring platforms, etc.).

Okay, so you’d have the ability to use Python on a network switch.  So what?  What about running onboard analytics on the switch?  What about sending the exact data you need, the data you use to troubleshoot, the data part of your operational workflow, directly upstream to a head end server, or just simply to an existing syslog Continue reading

Inetzero Blog: PIM Anycast RP

Read my blog regarding the PIM Anycast RP feature on The Inetzero blog and prepare your JNCIE exam with their materials:Workbooks and Racks. PIM ANYCAST BLOG More regarding Inetzero click there : David

Inetzero Blog: PIM Anycast RP

Read my blog regarding the PIM Anycast RP feature on The Inetzero blog and prepare your JNCIE exam with their materials:Workbooks and Racks. PIM ANYCAST BLOG More regarding Inetzero click there : David

Inetzero Blog: PIM Anycast RP

Read my blog regarding the PIM Anycast RP feature on The Inetzero blog and prepare your JNCIE exam with their materials:Workbooks and Racks. PIM ANYCAST BLOG More regarding Inetzero click there : David

Review: OpenStack Deployment

Deploying OpenStack Ken Pepple OpenStack is a wide ranging initiative started by Rackspace and NASA in 2010 designed to provide open source software to build and manage IaaS cloud services. What’s often missing in open source projects like OpenStack is a definitive guide to the release schedule, the different pieces, how the different pieces interact, […]

Author information

Russ White

Russ White
Principle Engineer at Ericsson

Russ White is a Network Architect who's scribbled a basket of books, penned a plethora of patents, written a raft of RFCs, taught a trencher of classes, and done a lot of other stuff you either already know about, or don't really care about. You want numbers and letters? Okay: CCIE 2635, CCDE 2007:001, CCAr, BSIT, MSIT (Network Design & Architecture, Capella University), MACM (Biblical Literature, Shepherds Theological Seminary). Russ is a Principal Engineer in the IPOS Team at Ericsson, where he works on lots of different stuff, serves on the Routing Area Directorate at the IETF, and is a cochair of the Internet Society Advisory Council. Russ will be speaking in November at the Ericsson Technology Day. he recently published The Art of Network Architecture, is currently working on a new book in the area Continue reading

OpenDaylight OpenStack Integration with DevStack on Fedora

The following is a walk through of the OVSDB project within OpenDaylight for OpenStack integration. There are a couple of bugs so it is not for the faint of heart. It is intended for those looking to get their development environment up and running. We will have videos and what not walking through the installation and code reviews of the ...

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The Role of Code In “The New Network”

I was inspired by many little things over the past few days to begin writing a post about this whole “writing code” thing that network engineers the world over have been asking about. I’ve said before I know that most network engineers already write some kind of code - even if it’s as simple as a snippet of VBA in an Excel spreadsheet to automatically convert a spreadsheet of configuration options into an actual running configuration.

The Role of Code In “The New Network”

I was inspired by many little things over the past few days to begin writing a post about this whole “writing code” thing that network engineers the world over have been asking about. I’ve said before I know that most network engineers already write some kind of code - even if it’s as simple as a snippet of VBA in an Excel spreadsheet to automatically convert a spreadsheet of configuration options into an actual running configuration.

Nexus 5K L3 Daughter Card Internal Port-Channels

I was trying to configure a FEX in Rack 27, so I called it FEX 127 and was configuring Port-Channel 127 so I could vPC to the FEX. However, as soon as I entered the following, I got an error message:

NX5K-1(config-if)# channel-group 127
command failed: internally used, configuration not allowed


When you have a Nexus 5K with an L3 daughter card, the switch internally allocates Po127 and Po128 to bind the L3 interfaces to the ASICs. So if you have a 5K running L2 only, and have already allocated Po127 and Po128, and then in the future add an L3 daughter card, the system will use other free Port-Channel IDs. But if you have an L3 daughter card, you cannot use Po127 and Po128 when setting up a new Port-Channel.

The Coffee Break – Show 1

This is “The Coffee Break”. A podcast on state of the networking business where we discuss vendors moves and news, analysis on product and positioning, and look at the business of networking. It's like a soundtrack for the network industry. In the time it takes to have coffee break. Or so.

The Coffee Break – Show 1

This is “The Coffee Break”. A podcast on state of the networking business where we discuss vendors moves and news, analysis on product and positioning, and look at the business of networking. It's like a soundtrack for the network industry.

In the time it takes to have coffee break. Or so.

Author information

Greg Ferro

Greg Ferro is a Network Engineer/Architect, mostly focussed on Data Centre, Security Infrastructure, and recently Virtualization. He has over 20 years in IT, in wide range of employers working as a freelance consultant including Finance, Service Providers and Online Companies. He is CCIE#6920 and has a few ideas about the world, but not enough to really count.

He is a host on the Packet Pushers Podcast, blogger at EtherealMind.com and on Twitter @etherealmind and Google Plus.

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The post The Coffee Break – Show 1 appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Greg Ferro.

Using the Cisco CSR1000V in GNS3 With VirtualBox

The better part of a year ago when the Cisco CSR1000V was publicly released, I quickly tested the notion of running the Cloud Services Router in VMWare Fusion on the Mac, rather than on a full vSphere server. Since then, I occasionally see that some readers land on my blog after searching for the terms “CSR1000V GNS3″ looking for assistance in integrating the CSR with the popular networking simulation platform. The CSR1000V is attractive as it provides a means to run IOS-XE, the same variant as on the ASR-series routers, and unlike Dynamips, Cisco has blessed use of the CSR with the 2.5 Mb/s throughput-limited trial license as a legitimate labbing platform. Last night I decided to see if it could be done. Turns out, it’s easy.

Download the Image

The key to running the CSR1000V in GNS3 is running it in VirtualBox. Well, OK, perhaps it’s possible to get it going with QEMU as I also noticed in the release notes for the 3.11 release that Linux KVM is a supported hypervisor now, but VirtualBox seemed the path of lesser resistance to me so that’s the way I went. In order to install the CSR in a Continue reading

Flow-aware Real-time SDN Analytics (FRSA)

Today at the OpenDaylight Summit in Santa Clara, Ram (Ramki) Krishnan of Brocade Communications presented a framework and set of use cases for applying software defined networking (SDN) techniques control large (elephant) flows. Ramki is a co-author of related Internet Drafts: Large Flow Use Cases for I2RS PBR and QoS and Mechanisms for Optimal LAG/ECMP Component Link Utilization in Networks. The slides from the talk are available on the OpenDaylight Summit web site.

This article will review the slides and discuss selected topics in detail.
The FRSA framework identifies four classes of traffic flow based on flow rate and flow duration and identifies long lived large flows as amenable to SDN based control since they can be readily observed, consume significant resources, and last long enough to be effectively controlled. The article, SDN and large flows, discusses the opportunity presented by large flow control in greater detail.
The two elements required in the FRSA framework are real-time traffic analytics - to rapidly identify the large flows (within seconds) and a control mechanism such as integrated hybrid OpenFlow, that allows the normal switch forwarding protocols to handle traffic, but offers a way for the controller to intervene and determine Continue reading
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