What’s an “Address”?

Currently, there are discussions in the IETF's Internet Area on the topic of architectural evolution of the Internet and its implications for the changing role of IP addresses, and I'd like to share some of my thoughts on this topic here.

Automaton 11. Data Models for NVIDIA Cumulus 5.0. Collecting Config and Operational Data via REST API with Ansible.

Hello my friend,

Right before the New Year we have posted an article, where we introduced a new approach to manage Cumulus Linux, which became available in the latest release to the date Cumulus Linux 5.0. This approach relies on REST API, which makes the automation of this platform very comfortable. Today we’ll cover how to collect the configuration and ope data with the most popular network and infrastructure automation tools these days: Ansible and Python.



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Ansible or Python? Python or Ansible?

To be absolutely frank, there is no “or”. There is only “and” in such a question. Both Ansible and Python play crucial role in network and infrastructure automation. Both of them are widely used in various companies from small enterprise to gigantic tier-1 web companies (e.g., Google, Amazon, etc). We see different usage patterns, such as Ansible + AWX being a main toolkit, or Python + Stackstorm or Apache Airflow Continue reading

Worth Reading: The Network Does Too Much

Tom Hollingsworth published a more eloquent version of what I’ve been saying for ages:

  • Complexity belongs to the end nodes;
  • Network should provide end-to-end packet transport, not a fix for every stupidity someone managed to push down the stack;
  • There’s nothing wrong with being a well-performing utility instead of pretending your stuff is working on unicorn farts and fairy dust.

Obviously it’s totally against the vested interest of any networking vendor out there to admit it.

Worth Reading: The Network Does Too Much

Tom Hollingsworth published a more eloquent version of what I’ve been saying for ages:

  • Complexity belongs to the end nodes;
  • Network should provide end-to-end packet transport, not a fix for every stupidity someone managed to push down the stack;
  • There’s nothing wrong with being a well-performing utility instead of pretending your stuff is working on unicorn farts and fairy dust.

Obviously it’s totally against the vested interest of any networking vendor out there to admit it.

To eBGP or not to iBGP — that is the query (please with me ;)

To eBGP or not to iBGP — that is the query (please 🐻 with me ;)

BGP EVPN with VXLAN to the multi-tenant hosts (using SR Linux and SR OS)
Bearish topology for VXLAN-to-the-hosts

There are many ways to do things, and some ways are subjectively better than others. Sometimes, things that may have been a Bad Idea™ in the past become a Not_So_Bad_After_All(maybe, provided X and not Y) option in light of new developments or concerns. To tell which one is which, we’ll just have to give it a go and see where we end up. And whatever happens — 🤞 chances are we’ll learn some things in the process regardless!

The evolution of BGP-to-the-host (how the … did we end up here?)

From L2 (with STP), to L3 (with IGP), to BGP with SDN on the hosts

“Accelerating waves of change to open (2021)” paints a picture of how we can see things evolving over time. From hardware to software, from L2 to static L3 to dynamically signaled L3 with BGP to VXLAN (L2-over-L3) — it all follows a similar pattern of evolutionary change, building on technology from the past to create the future, following the path of the adjacent possible. The terminology and acronyms we humans Continue reading

Which CCIE is most demanded in 2022?

Which CCIE is most demanded in 2022?. Most of us, almost every Network Engineer in our IT career probably asked this question. It is important because demanded certification provides job security and having it means finding a job or changing the company easily.

Cisco CCIE has many different tracks as of 2022. After CCIE certification, the next step is CCDE. Before we continue most demanded CCIE, I would like to say that CCDE is not well known by the recruiters, so may be hard to find a job easily with it, but it is quite popular and respectful among the CCIEs. So, if someone passes CCIE Enterprise or CCIE Service Provider, they are definitely aware of CCDE and start considering that certificate.

Let’s continue our most demanded CCIE track discussion.

For many years most demanded CCIE was always CCIE Routing and Switching. As you might be aware, Cisco changed the CCIE Routing and Switching certification name to CCIE Enterprise Infrastructure, and the CCIE Enterprise syllabus has been updated as well.

We provide many CCIE tracks and among our students, CCIE Enterprise Infrastructure training is the most popular CCIE, most demanded CCIE track as well.

We recommend CCIE Continue reading

CCIE Salary – How much you can get if you pass Cisco CCIE Certification?

CCIE Salary, Cisco CCIE salary. Many people have been searching these two words on OrhanErgun.Net for some time.

Many people also have been asking me, how much they can earn monthly if they pass Cisco CCIE practical/lab exam.

For more information on CCIE course content, success stories, and registration, this is our CCIE Course.

I think the answer depends on many criteria. Since this post will be read by people all around the world, it is important to share some insights on the topic.

Before talking about dependencies, you should know some facts about the CCIE certification. Unlike CCDE, Cisco CCIE Certification is known by the recruiters very well as it has been posted as a job requirement for decades.

There are thousands of them in the world, especially Cisco CCIE Routing and Switching, the new name Cisco CCIE Enterprise Infrastructure certificate is around 50000+ people we are talking about.

At the beginning of his post, I said that CCIE salary depends on many criteria.

These are in general

  • Country
  • Position
  • Changing the company
  • Years of experience

Most probably there are other things that would affect the salary of the CCIE but these are my observations.

The country is Continue reading

Heavy Networking 615: Optimize User Experience With Palo Alto Networks’ ADEM (Sponsored)

How do you know your remote workers are having good performance--a good experience--using the applications they need to get their work done? Today we drill into Autonomous Digital Experience Management (ADEM) with sponsor Palo Alto Networks, including how ADEM works, the benefits of real-time and synthetic monitoring, how ADEM integrates with SASE, and more.

Heavy Networking 615: Optimize User Experience With Palo Alto Networks’ ADEM (Sponsored)

How do you know your remote workers are having good performance--a good experience--using the applications they need to get their work done? Today we drill into Autonomous Digital Experience Management (ADEM) with sponsor Palo Alto Networks, including how ADEM works, the benefits of real-time and synthetic monitoring, how ADEM integrates with SASE, and more.

The post Heavy Networking 615: Optimize User Experience With Palo Alto Networks’ ADEM (Sponsored) appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Between 0x② nerd knobs — BGP unnumbered on SR Linux

Using a custom FRR agent 🕴️

Supporting BGP unnumbered on SR Linux using a custom embedded agent

As (also) explained in this vodcast by Jeff Doyle and Jeff Tantsura (April 2020), BGP remains a key protocol in networks of all sizes. As part of a global drive for simplification and automation, the engineers at Cumulus Networks have pioneered a feature called “BGP unnumbered” to simplify the configuration of large data center fabrics: RFC8950 (formerly RFC5549) describes how extended next-hop encoding can be negotiated and used to exchange IPv4 prefix routes using IPv6 next hops, such that the fabric interfaces can use auto-assigned IPv6 link-local addresses (only), with no IPv4 at all. In combination with AS number discovery, this greatly simplifies the configuration.

SR Linux inherits its BGP stack from Nokia SR OS, a robust mature hardened software product that runs the internet. It already supports the majority of features that one would expect in a data center context: Besides IPv4/v6 and EVPN address families, there is support for RFC8950 extended next-hop encoding, extensive BGP import/export policies, and much much more. However, in the case of large service provider networks and the internet at large, BGP is often and commonly used between Continue reading

HPC As A Service Comes Full Circle And Will Help Take HPC Mainstream

The IT industry is at the doorstep of the long-awaited exascale era, which promises massive systems that can run at least one exaflops, or a quintillion (a billion billion) calculations per second, at 64-bit precision and a lot more than that at lower precision and even more using low-precision integer data pumped through their vector and matrix engines. …

HPC As A Service Comes Full Circle And Will Help Take HPC Mainstream was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

The Network Does Too Much

I’m at Networking Field Day this week and it’s good to be back in person around other brilliant engineers and companies. One of the other fun things that happens at Networking Field Day is that I get to chat with folks that help me think about things in new ways and come up with awesome ideas for networking blog posts.

One of the ones that was discussed quickly this week really got me thinking again about fragility and complexity. Thanks to Carl Fugate for reminding me about it. Essentially, networks are inherently unstable because they are doing far too much heavy lifting.

Swiss Army Design

Have you heard about the AxeSaw Reddit? It’s a page dedicated to finding silly tools that attempt to combine too many things together into one package that make the overall tool less useful. Like making a combination shovel and axe that isn’t easy to operate because you have to hold on to the shovel scoop as the handle for the axe and so on. It’s a goofy take on a trend of trying to make things too compact at the sake of usability.

Networking has this issue as well. I’ve talked about it before here Continue reading

Weekend Reads 012822


DigiTimes reports that processor prices are set to increase “substantially” in 2022 due to a boost in foundry costs. Specifically, processors based on the sub-7nm process nodes are expected to be more expensive moving forward.


For the past four months, Apple’s iOS and iPadOS devices and Safari browser have violated one of the Internet’s most sacrosanct security policies. The violation results from a bug that leaks user identities and browsing activity in real time.


Although the advisory discussed above is specific to Russian threat actors, the lessons learned and approaches to preparedness, detection, and prevention are generically applicable to a wide range of threats for both IT and OT.


An active espionage campaign has been attributed to the threat actor known as Molerats that abuses legitimate cloud services like Google Drive and Dropbox to host malware payloads and for command-and-control and the exfiltration of data from targets across the Middle East.


HTTPS serves as a critical infrastructure for web security, protecting the privacy and integrity of communications between networks. An important aspect of the extension is the authentication process, which is powered by Web PKI via digital certificates that are issued by Certificate Authorities (CAs).


Their intention is to expand Continue reading

Stuff The Internet Says On Scalability For January 28th, 2022

Never fear, HighScalability is here!


Think your software diagram is complex? This is a single cell modeled using X-ray, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), and cryo-electron microscopy datasets. Gael McGill

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