Programming 101 for Network Engineers – Why Bother?

Is this you perhaps? You’re the king of the network. You know it all inside out (your company and its processes too). You have every CLI mastered, you know the RPs you use in-depth, you’ve seen and used all the big management platforms, and you even know a fair bit about a few critical applications. […]

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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 Programming 101 for Network Engineers – Why Bother? appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Steven Iveson.

Upgrading F5 BIGIP HA Pair from v10 to v11 – Ethan’s Notes

I recently completed a challenging upgrade on a pair of production F5 3600s running 10.2.0, going to 11.2.1 running the LTM module. In hindsight, it shouldn’t have been a challenging upgrade, but that was due to the things I learned along the way. Lessons Learned License reactivation. The upgrade document doesn’t say much about this. […]

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Ethan Banks

Co-host at Packet Pushers

Ethan Banks, CCIE #20655, has been managing networks for higher ed, government, financials and high tech since 1995. Ethan co-hosts the Packet Pushers Podcast, which has seen over 3M downloads and reaches over 10K listeners. With whatever time is left, Ethan writes for fun & profit, studies for certifications, and enjoys science fiction. @ecbanks
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The post Upgrading F5 BIGIP HA Pair from v10 to v11 – Ethan’s Notes appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Ethan Banks.

The Importance of QoS in a Converged Infrastructure

I’ve done quite a few posts on Quality of Service, particularly on it’s basic concepts, as well as specific implementation details in a Data Center environment. Many of these concepts can be applied to really any use case, since QoS is QoS - just depends on how you classify traffic. But what do we gain by implementing QoS, especially in a context like Data Center, where a modern core layer is typically at least 10GbE and network congestion is rarely seen?

The Importance of QoS in a Converged Infrastructure

I’ve done quite a few posts on Quality of Service, particularly on it’s basic concepts, as well as specific implementation details in a Data Center environment. Many of these concepts can be applied to really any use case, since QoS is QoS - just depends on how you classify traffic. But what do we gain by implementing QoS, especially in a context like Data Center, where a modern core layer is typically at least 10GbE and network congestion is rarely seen?

Fabricpath Design, Think it Through! – part 1

Designing fabricpath? Deploying fabricpath? Read on! summary: FabricPath is a Layer-2 routing architecture (yes L2 routing), using ISIS to build shortest path trees to destination bridges...

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

DCI: The Need for Stretched Layer 2

In the previous article in this DCI series (Why is there a “Wrong Way” to Interconnect Datacenters?) I explained the business case for having multiple data centers and then closed by warning that extending Layer 2 domains was a path to disaster and undermined the resiliency of having two data centers.

Why then is stretching Layer 2 a) needed and b) a go-to maneuver for DCI.

Let's look at it from two points of view: technology and business.

No Experience is Irrelevant

So you’ve recently changed jobs, and you have a very extensive linux skillset. Your new job doesn’t include or require this skillset. Does that mean that experience will not serve you in this new role? Absolutely false. The most valuable thing these experiences give us is perspective. The ability to see things from a unique point of view makes you a unique and valuable addition to any team. This is a strong reason for my advocacy of the Unified Skillset.

No Experience is Irrelevant

So you’ve recently changed jobs, and you have a very extensive linux skillset. Your new job doesn’t include or require this skillset. Does that mean that experience will not serve you in this new role? Absolutely false. The most valuable thing these experiences give us is perspective. The ability to see things from a unique point of view makes you a unique and valuable addition to any team. This is a strong reason for my advocacy of the Unified Skillset.

ONS 2013 Brings Together The Entire SDN Ecosystem on April 15-17

Software Defined Networking (SDN) is revolutionizing the traditional networking approaches that have become too complex, closed, proprietary and/or difficult to program. The technology has the potential to enable network innovation by allowing network owners and operators more control of their infrastructure, thus allowing customization, optimization, and the reduction in overall capital and operational expenses. SDN […]

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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 ONS 2013 Brings Together The Entire SDN Ecosystem on April 15-17 appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Sponsored Blog Posts.

Wanted: OpenFlow Switch With ofp_action To Modify The Destination L3 Address

This article is meant to serve in part as an appendix to my previous post on PacketPushers.net. Therefore, please take a moment to read this introduction of Sakura Internet’s DDoS detection and mitigation app if you haven’t already. At Sakura, we are in the process of implementing source-and-destination-based DDoS packet filtering that should be effective and […]

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Tamihiro Yuzawa

Tamihiro Yuzawa

Tamihiro Yuzawa is a network engineer at Sakura Internet, one of Japan's major data center service providers. Before he joined Sakura in 2007, he spent five years at a busy CRM service provider. Both companies have allowed him to stay mostly within the intersection of these circles, and he is pretty much determined to remain in a serious relationship with both Dev and Ops.

The post Wanted: OpenFlow Switch With ofp_action To Modify The Destination L3 Address appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Tamihiro Yuzawa.

Come to ONS 2013 April 15-17 & Plug-in to SDN

Software Defined Networking (SDN) is the buzzword on the mind of every player in the networking and telecom ecosystem; promises to revolutionize networking as we know it and will affect service provider networks, cloud networks and enterprise networks. Open Networking Summit (ONS) 2013 is the premier conference for SDN and Open Flow and has established […]

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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 Come to ONS 2013 April 15-17 & Plug-in to SDN appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Sponsored Blog Posts.

Nuage Networks VSP – Delivers SDN in a Big Way – White Paper – Sponsored

Nuage Networks announces their Virtualised Services Platform and shows that SDN Networking is closer than you think. VSP is a multi-layer solution with a SDN app, controller & network agent with some technical chops. It's derived from Alcatel-Lucent's Service Routers and offers multi-data centre networking that's fully integrated with your MPLS WAN ? Find out more in the very first Packet Pushers Sponsored White Paper where we scratch it's technical under belly.

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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 Nuage Networks VSP – Delivers SDN in a Big Way – White Paper – Sponsored appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Greg Ferro.

Translators wanted

Translation support will be available on next phpipam release, code is being redone and final checks ongoing. I have decided to go with gettext, it seems to be the most suitable for phpipam.

Translating is straight-forward, by providing translations for strings, for example:

#: functions/functions-mail.php:176
msgid “your domain username”
msgstr “translated text”

There are many tools available to help with translation, like poedit and others.

If anyone is interested in providing translation, please contact me on email. I have already received some requests in the past, I will try to dig up old emails…

brm

The Future of F5 Networks: SDN, iRules & Node.js

Unlike some others in the network industry (until lately at least), those dealing with F5 Networks’ products are probably well accustomed to change – significant and fast paced change at that. F5 are not a company to shy away from rapid change and replacing old technology and tools with newer, better ones. The change from the […]

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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 The Future of F5 Networks: SDN, iRules & Node.js appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Steven Iveson.

Why is there a “Wrong Way” to Interconnect Datacenters?

There's certainly a lot of focus on data center interconnection (DCI) right now. And understandably so since there are many trends in the industry that are making IT organizations look at data center redundancy. Among these trends are:

  1. The business is saying to IT that they require their IT services to be available at all times. In effect the business is saying that they want to be shielded from technology issues, maintenance windows, and unplanned downtime because the IT services they consume (not all of them mind you, but certainly some of them) are so critical to running the business that they cannot be without them (or, they cannot be without them for whatever period of time it would take IT to recover the service).
  2. The technical ability to move workloads between sites thanks to the near ubiquity of features like vMotion and Live Migration. The ability to pick up an application and swing it over to another location makes item #1 above far less daunting to IT shops and lowers the barrier to adoption.

In this post I'm going to talk about how IT can address item #1 above — the business need — in a manner Continue reading

Which IPv6 source address to choose

In the good old days of IPv4, an interface on a host could have only one IPv4 IP address. Things were very simple, every IP host would use that one address as the source IP for all communication. When we get into IPv6, each interface can have multiple IPv6 addresses. These addresses have different scopes such as global, unique-local and link-local. If an IPv6 enabled host would like to send a packets to another host, which source IPv6 address does it choose? What if it has four addresses: 2001:10::3/64 (Global from ISP A), 2001:23::3/64 (Global from ISP B), fc00:23::3/64 (Unique-Local) and fe80:23::3 (Link-Local)?

As with almost everything there is a nice RFC written on this topic. RFC6724 Default Address Selection for Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) defines how to select a source IPv6 address. It mentions eight rules for source selection, here is the summary and translation:

Rule 1: Prefer same address
Rule 2: Prefer appropriate scope
Rule 3: Avoid deprecated addresses
Rule 4: Prefer home addresses
Rule 5: Prefer outgoing interface
Rule 6: Prefer matching label
Rule 7: Prefer temporary addresses
Rule 8: Use longest matching prefix

In the remainder of Continue reading

OpenFlow 1.0 Actual Use-Case: RTBH of DDoS Traffic While Keeping the Target Online

Sakura Internet operates several data centers across Japan, including this one, and my team is in charge of building and taking care of our IP backbones. In this article, I will introduce the ongoing process of upgrading our DDoS mitigation solution, which happens to be a down-to-earth, if not widely applicable, use case for OpenFlow. […]

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Tamihiro Yuzawa

Tamihiro Yuzawa

Tamihiro Yuzawa is a network engineer at Sakura Internet, one of Japan's major data center service providers. Before he joined Sakura in 2007, he spent five years at a busy CRM service provider. Both companies have allowed him to stay mostly within the intersection of these circles, and he is pretty much determined to remain in a serious relationship with both Dev and Ops.

The post OpenFlow 1.0 Actual Use-Case: RTBH of DDoS Traffic While Keeping the Target Online appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Tamihiro Yuzawa.

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