From SMB to Enterprise: Taking the Leap

After working in small business IT for over a decade, I made the leap to a large healthcare enterprise. Although I had been very successful in providing solutions in the SMB space, I didn’t know how well my skill set would transfer into a larger environment. Three years into my experience in the enterprise, I’ve […]

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Eyvonne Sharp

Eyvonne Sharp

Eyvonne Sharp is a senior network engineer for a large healthcare enterprise where her focus is security and data center architecture. Before working in the enterprise, she spent 10 years working for small VARs and integrators in the SMB space. Eyvonne blogs at esharp.net and you can connect with her on twitter @SharpNetwork

The post From SMB to Enterprise: Taking the Leap appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Eyvonne Sharp.

Network Virtualization Gets Physical

Network virtualization, as others have noted, is now well past the hype stage and in serious production deployments. One factor that has facilitated the adoption of network virtualization is the ease with which it can be incrementally deployed. In a typical data center, the necessary infrastructure is already in place. Servers are interconnected by a physical network that already meets the basic requirements for network virtualization: providing IP connectivity between the physical servers. And the servers are themselves virtualized, providing the ideal insertion point for network virtualization: the vswitch (virtual switch). Because the vswitch is the first hop in the data path for every packet that enters or leaves a VM, it’s the natural place to implement the data plane for network virtualization. This is the approach taken by VMware (and by Nicira before we were part of VMware) to enable network virtualization, and it forms the basis for our current deployments.

In typical data centers, however, not every machine is virtualized. “Bare metal” servers — that is, unvirtualized, or physical machines — are a fact of life in most real data centers. Sometimes they are present because they run software that is not easily virtualized, or because of Continue reading

Speaker for the Dead – Privacy and Trust

This series of articles allows me to play the part of a ‘Speaker for the Dead’ for technology that has or is becoming ‘end of life’ or legacy and/or irrelevant (or which should be). In this article, the subject isn’t a specific technology or protocol although technology has brought about it’s demise; it’s something far […]

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Steven Iveson

Steven Iveson

Steven Iveson, the last of four children of the seventies, was born in London and has never been too far from a shooting, bombing or riot. He's now grateful to live in a small town in East Yorkshire in the north east of England with his wife Sam and their four children.

He's worked in the IT industry for over 15 years in a variety of roles, predominantly in data centre environments. Working with switches and routers pretty much from the start he now also has a thirst for application delivery, SDN, virtualisation and related products and technologies. He's published a number of F5 Networks related books and is a regular contributor at DevCentral.

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The post Speaker for the Dead – Privacy and Trust appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Steven Iveson.

Why We Do Packet Pushers – Email From a Listener

I got this email from Joel which made my day. It is email like this that keep us motivated and feel that Ethan & I are creating something worthwhile. Sometimes ‘packet pushing’ is just a lot of work, sometimes it is great fun, sometime we make a bit of money from sponsors too. But knowing […]

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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 Why We Do Packet Pushers – Email From a Listener appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Greg Ferro.

Flow

Have you ever struggled to explain to your parents or friends why you still study technical topics at night? It can be frustrating trying to explain to these people why you do what you do. Let’s be honest, it’s hard to explain ‘why’ to ourselves, never mind explain it to others. I have found a […]

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John Harrington

John is an experienced data center engineer with a background in mobile telecoms. He works as a network test engineer for a large cloud service provider, and is gradually accepting that he's a nerd. He blogs about network technology and careers at theNetworkSherpa.com. You can reach him on twitter at: @networksherpa

The post Flow appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by John Harrington.

Why Blog?

I have been involved in various technical social networks and blogging for quite a while. Beginning in about 2008, I started spending a lot of time helping others over at the Cisco Learning Network. About the same time I launched PacketU.com. In May of 2013, John Harrington and I coordinated the site that you’re currently […]

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Paul Stewart

Paul is a Network and Security Engineer, Trainer and Blogger who enjoys understanding how things really work. With nearly 15 years of experience in the technology industry, Paul has helped many organizations build, maintain and secure their networks and systems. Paul also writes technical content at PacketU.

The post Why Blog? appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Paul Stewart.

Webinar: ManageEngine on Log Analysis and Netflow

ManageEngine is a well known vendor of Network Management tools with tens of thousands of customers worldwide with a portfolio covering the full spectrum including Performance, Server/Application, Help Desk, Desktop Management. Sign up here

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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 Webinar: ManageEngine on Log Analysis and Netflow appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Greg Ferro.

Show 157 – ONS Roundup – SDN,Enterprise, Wireless and More

This show was recorded by Brent Salisbury at Open Networking Summit in April 2013 http://www.opennetsummit.org where he got a bunch of folks around a microphone to talk about OpenFlow/SDN and the progress being made in the organisations. Show topics How is OpenFlow progressing ? Open Daylight foundation and its inception. Is the future of OpenFlow assured and what […]

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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 Show 157 – ONS Roundup – SDN,Enterprise, Wireless and More appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Greg Ferro.

Cisco VIRL – Virtual Internet Routing Lab

How does the internet work - We know what is networking

Virtualisation In a world in which every day I hear virtualization at least 50 times it would be very strange that there is some part of our digital environment which is not yet virtualised. Today we can see that almost every piece of our server equipment is going to the cloud hence is being virtualised. That is not a […]

Cisco VIRL – Virtual Internet Routing Lab

A review of the recent Coursera SDN MOOC

Back in the springtime of this year, I saw that Coursera was going to be offering a free six-week SDN MOOC taught by Dr. Nick Feamster, an Associate Professor at Georgia Tech’s School of Computer Science. As I had already been learning about and investigating this new SDN world in my free time, I thought […]

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Will Dennis

Will Dennis

Will Dennis has been a systems and network administrator since 1989, and is currently the Network Administrator for NEC Laboratories America, located in Princeton NJ. He enjoys the constant learning it takes to keep up with the field of network and systems administration, and is currently pursuing the Cisco CCNP-R/S certification. He can be found on the Twitters as @willarddennis, and on Google Plus.

The post A review of the recent Coursera SDN MOOC appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Will Dennis.

NetworkFaculty.com: Bite-sized IT Training Videos On Demand

These days, access to the web means that users are simply a click away from discovering anything – from how to expertly mollycoddle their Macs to the secret to a perfect cup of tea. But, as we all know, not everything is perfect. Many e-learning services do not have the luxuries of the time and […]

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Sponsored Blog Posts

The Packet Pushers work with our vendors to present a limited number of sponsored blog posts to our community. This is one. If you're a vendor and think you have some blog content you'd like to sponsor, contact us via [email protected].

The post NetworkFaculty.com: Bite-sized IT Training Videos On Demand appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Sponsored Blog Posts.

Negotiating your salary

There is probably no more stressful stage in the interview process than negotiating your salary. You usually don’t know entirely what to ask for. You have a feel for what you would like, but most of us have a healthy fear of leaving money on the table. We are less worried about asking for too […]

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Michael Bushong

The post Negotiating your salary appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Michael Bushong.

Show 156 – Tail-f Network Control System – Sponsored

This episode (re-)introduces Carl Moberg and dives into Tail-f’s Network Control System (NCS). We talk through the moving parts of Network Control System at a technical level and discuss why you should care about this product. If you have been interested in tools that do multivendor automation of the network then you will be interested in this discussion.

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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 Show 156 – Tail-f Network Control System – Sponsored appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Greg Ferro.

Using Wireshark to Decode SSL/TLS Packets

I mentioned in my Tcpdump Masterclass that Wireshark is capable of decrypting SSL/TLS encrypted data in packets captured in any supported format and that if anyone wanted to know how for them to ask. Someone did, so here it is. This is an extremely useful Wireshark feature, particularly when troubleshooting within highly secure network architectures. […]

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Steven Iveson

Steven Iveson

Steven Iveson, the last of four children of the seventies, was born in London and has never been too far from a shooting, bombing or riot. He's now grateful to live in a small town in East Yorkshire in the north east of England with his wife Sam and their four children.

He's worked in the IT industry for over 15 years in a variety of roles, predominantly in data centre environments. Working with switches and routers pretty much from the start he now also has a thirst for application delivery, SDN, virtualisation and related products and technologies. He's published a number of F5 Networks related books and is a regular contributor at DevCentral.

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The post Using Wireshark to Decode SSL/TLS Packets appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Steven Iveson.

Quality of Service (QoS) – Policing and Shaping Notes

Policers and shapers identify traffic violations in an identical manner, but treat them differently.  Policers perform instantaneous checks and immediately take action when a violation occurs.  Actions can include marking, dropping, and even just transmitting the packet.  Shapers on the other hand are traffic-smoothing tools.  Its objective is to send all traffic out a given interface, but to smooth it out so that it never exceeds a given rate – usually in order to meet SLAs.  Excess traffic is buffered and delayed until the traffic once again dips below the defined maximum rate.

Policer Shaper

Causes TCP resends as traffic is dropped

Delays traffic; involves less TCP resends

Inflexible; makes instant drop decisions

Adapts to network congestion by queuing excess traffic

Ingress or egress interface tool

Typically egress only

Rate limiting – no buffering

Rate limiting with buffering

While policing and shaping tools are not employed to directly provide QoS for real-time traffic, they do regulate/stabilize traffic flows so that unexpected bursts in data traffic do not induce jitter and latency that adversely affects real-time traffic.

Policers determine whether each packet conforms, exceeds, or violates the policies configured for traffic, and takes the prescribed action Continue reading

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