Network Architecture 2021: Old Network Technologies Remain Relevant
Solved problems are still there but they don't need attention
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Benefits Of Coworking Spaces
Coworking spaces have seen a rapid increase in recent years. In 2018, coworking spaces in the U.S increased by more than 16%. On the other hand, these spaces outside the U.S increased by 36%. So, what is the reason for this increase?
Are coworking spaces that effective? Let’s find out.
1. People Find Work More Meaningful In Coworking Spaces
We are all familiar with office politics. It exists in every business, and there is no way out of it. However, freelancers sharing coworking spaces don’t feel the need to put another persona when they work here.
That is because they are among people doing different kinds of work, and no one competes with each other. That is why it enhances the identity of one’s own work. Through this strong identity, people find more meaning as what they do seems more unique and interesting in such an environment.
2. Networking
Networking is perhaps one of the most important benefits of utilizing a coworking space. People connect with each other that they would not normally meet if it wasn’t for the space. These connections help in being part of a community.
However, if you are running a small business through Continue reading
Cloud Native Networking – Andree Toonk, Internet Infrastructure Architect
Andree is an experienced technologist and entrepreneur with a passion for all aspects of Internet infrastructure. He is also the founder of BGPMon.
Today Andree focusses on designing and building cloud native (networking) applications. Make sure to check out his blog https://toonk.io/ and latest project https://www.mysocket.io/.
A Boring Announcement: Free Tunnels for Everyone
A few months ago, we announced that we wanted to make Zero Trust security accessible to everyone, regardless of size, scale, or resources. Argo Tunnel, our secure method of connecting resources directly to Cloudflare, is the next piece of the puzzle.
Argo Tunnel creates a secure, outbound-only connection between your services and Cloudflare by deploying a lightweight connector in your environment. With this model, your team does not need to go through the hassle of poking holes in your firewall or validating that traffic originated from Cloudflare IPs.
In the past, Argo Tunnel has been priced based on bandwidth consumption as part of Argo Smart Routing, Cloudflare’s traffic acceleration feature. Starting today, we’re excited to announce that any organization can use the secure, outbound-only connection feature of the product at no cost. You can still add the paid Argo Smart Routing feature to accelerate traffic.
As part of that change (and to reduce confusion), we’re also renaming the product to Cloudflare Tunnel. To get started, sign up today.
If you’re interested in how and why we’re doing this, keep scrolling.
A Private Link to the Public Internet
In 2018, Cloudflare introduced Argo Tunnel, a private, secure connection between your origin Continue reading
Bangkok’s Neutral Peering Hub Scales Its Capacity
Bangkok Neutral Internet Exchange (BKNIX) recently expanded its Internet exchange capacity thanks to outstanding carrier-class equipment provided by the Internet Society In 2015, Bangkok Neutral Internet Exchange (BKNIX) was launched with the ambition to fix slow Internet, improve online experience for users, and lower the cost of Internet access for people in Thailand. BKNIX knew […]
The post Bangkok’s Neutral Peering Hub Scales Its Capacity appeared first on Internet Society.
What is gNMI?
A few weeks ago we released an episode on the fundamentals of gRPC. And while programmatic interfaces are excellent tools for network automation, often that is only the beginning of the story. That’s no exception with gRPC. In this episode we continue down the path of that gRPC conversation and into gNMI, a standards based approached to programmatic interaction with network devices utilizing gRPC. We discuss what it is, how it works, and where it stands in today’s fast moving environment.
Relevant Links:
Nick Russo
Guest
Roman Dodin
Guest
Tony Efantis
Host
Jordan Martin
Host
Outro Music:
Danger Storm Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
The post What is gNMI? appeared first on Network Collective.
Fundamentals: Is Switching Latency Relevant?
One of my readers wondered whether it makes sense to buy low-latency switches from Cisco or Juniper instead of switches based on merchant silicon like Trident-3 or Jericho (regardless of whether they are running NX-OS, Junos, EOS, or Linux).
As always, the answer is it depends, but before getting into the details, let’s revisit what latency really is. We’ll start with a simple two-node network.
The simplest possible network
Fundamentals: Is Switching Latency Relevant?
One of my readers wondered whether it makes sense to buy low-latency switches from Cisco or Juniper instead of switches based on merchant silicon like Trident-3 or Jericho (regardless of whether they are running NX-OS, Junos, EOS, or Linux).
As always, the answer is it depends, but before getting into the details, let’s revisit what latency really is. We’ll start with a simple two-node network.
The simplest possible network
Cut-Through Switching Isn’t A Thing Anymore
So, cut-through switching isn’t a thing anymore. It hasn’t been for a while really, though in the age of VXLAN, it’s really not a thing. And of course with all things IT, there are exceptions. But by and large, Cut-through switching just isn’t a thing.
And it doesn’t matter.
Cut-through versus store-and-forward was a preference years ago. The idea is that cut-through switching had less latency than store and forward (it does, to a certain extent). It was also the preferred method, and purchasing decisions may have been made (and sometimes still are, mostly erroneously) on whether a switch is cut-through or store-and-forward.
In this article I’m going to cover two things:
- Why you can’t really do cut-through switching
- Why it doesn’t matter that you can’t do cut-through switching
Why You Can’t Do Cut-Through Switching (Mostly)
You can’t do cut-through switching when you change speeds. If the bits in a frame are sent at 10 Gigabits, they need to go into a buffer before they’re sent over a 100 Gigabit uplink. The reverse is also true. You can’t stuff a frame that’s piling into an interface 10 times faster than it’s sending (though it’s not slowed down).
So any switch Continue reading
SD-WAN Part IV: MPLS Network with IS-IS Segment Routing as SD-WAN Transport
Introduction
In order to have IP connectivity between hosts A and B over the underlay transport network, we need to build a tunnel (IPSec or GRE) between the Public IP addresses of vEdge devices (TLOC Routes). Then we also need VPN-specific subnet routing information (OMP Routes) to be able to route traffic over the tunnel. This chapter discusses the role and operation of various protocols involved in Control Plane operations when an MPLS Transport network is used as an Underlay Network for SD-WAN solution. The first section introduces the Segment Routing solution for building a Label Switch Path (LSP) between PE routers over the MPLS backbone by using the IS-IS routing protocol for both routing and label distribution. The second section explains how to build L3VPN between vEdge Public IP addresses over the LSP. Figure 4-1 shows the high-level routing model used in this chapter.
Figure 4-1: Control Plane Model.
Cloud Networking Startup Alkira Spins Up In Azure Marketplace
Cloud networking startup Alkira announced that it’s been selected for the “Microsoft for Startups” program. Microsoft offers the program to emerging companies to provide “technology and business support designed to help B2B startups quickly scale.” As part of the program, Alkira will get ecosystem support from Microsoft such as “access to technical, sales and marketing […]
The post Cloud Networking Startup Alkira Spins Up In Azure Marketplace appeared first on Packet Pushers.
Day Two Cloud 093: Application Modernization With VMware (Sponsored)
Today’s Day Two Cloud tackles application modernization with sponsor VMware. As new application platforms such as containers and the public cloud take hold, organizations need to examine their application portfolio to figure out how applications are meeting business requirements—and how they aren’t. The point of app modernization is to determine whether a new approach and... Read more »Day Two Cloud 093: Application Modernization With VMware (Sponsored)
Today’s Day Two Cloud tackles application modernization with sponsor VMware. As new application platforms such as containers and the public cloud take hold, organizations need to examine their application portfolio to figure out how applications are meeting business requirements—and how they aren’t. The point of app modernization is to determine whether a new approach and […]
The post Day Two Cloud 093: Application Modernization With VMware (Sponsored) appeared first on Packet Pushers.
Security Power Block Series: Secure Your Data Center with NSX Firewall
We get it. The world of network security is changing, and it’s hard to keep up. Between your regular duties, pressure to adapt to changing realities, and pandemic stress on both your work and home life, it’s a challenge to find the time to build new skills.
Understanding that your time is precious, we’ve created a series of succinct, 30-minute, security-focused webinars that take a deep dive into the topics, strategies, and techniques you need to know. The four sessions in our Security Power Block Series will explore the new security landscape, how our unique architecture is ideal for protecting East-West traffic from modern security threats, and real-world use cases you can use to operationalize your data center security at scale.
You can register for one, two, three, or all sessions at once and you’ll automatically receive invitations with session links that you can add directly to your calendar. Staying informed — and learning new skills — couldn’t be easier.
Network Segmentation Made Easy
April 14, 2021
10:00 a.m. PT
Zoning or segmenting data center networks into manageable chunks Continue reading
Automating ServiceNow with Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform
IT service management (ITSM) is a collection of policies and processes for the management and support of IT services. The main focus of ITSM is increasing the value of the customers’ service chain. But without the proper automation support, providing IT services can quickly become a major time-sink.
This is where the Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform and the Red Hat Ansible Certified Content Collection for ServiceNow come into play. Ansible Automation (with some help from existing Ansible content) can automate just about any task, while the modules from this Certified Collection allow us to keep the ServiceNow information up to date.
This Collection was designed and developed by the XLAB Steampunk team in close collaboration with Red Hat Ansible, specifically keeping end-users in mind. ServiceNow modules have an intuitive user interface backed by a robust implementation, offering support for things Ansible users expect (e.g., check mode and change detection).
In this post, we will look at a few sample Ansible Playbooks that take care of essential tasks such as:
- Updating incidents, problems, and change requests
- Updating the ServiceNow configuration management database (CMDB)
- Using the CMDB as an inventory source
Installing the Certified Content Collection for ServiceNow
Netsim-tools Release 0.5 Work with Containerlab
TL&DR: If you happen to like working with containers, you could use netsim-tools release 0.5 to provision your container-based Arista EOS labs.
Why does it matter? Lab setup is blindingly fast, and it’s easier to integrate your network devices with other containers, not to mention the crazy idea of running your network automation CI pipeline on Gitlab CPU cycles. Also, you could use the same netsim-tools topology file and provisioning scripts to set up container-based or VM-based lab.
What is containerlab? A cool project that builds realistic virtual network topologies with containers. More details…
Netsim-tools Release 0.5 Work with Containerlab
TL&DR: If you happen to like working with containers, you could use netsim-tools release 0.5 to provision your container-based Arista EOS labs.
Why does it matter? Lab setup is blindingly fast, and it’s easier to integrate your network devices with other containers, not to mention the crazy idea of running your network automation CI pipeline on Gitlab CPU cycles. Also, you could use the same netsim-tools topology file and provisioning scripts to set up container-based or VM-based lab.
What is containerlab? A cool project that builds realistic virtual network topologies with containers. More details…