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Software Defined & Intent Based Networking

You are here: Home / 2014 / Archives for February 2014

Archives for February 2014

Response: Is TLS Fast Yet?

25th February 2014 By Greg Ferro Filed Under: Blog, Response

The impacts of market commoditisation in networking happen are occurring in more segments than just whitebox switches and network operating system. The Internet is steadily progressing towards the exclusive use of HTTP for all communication and bypasses the plethora of protocols that were once in use. And even within HTTP, the current direction of the HTTP/2 protocol standards and it’s proposed of TLS encryption for all protocols will radically change many aspects of the Internet.

Data delivered over an unencrypted channel is insecure, untrustworthy, and trivially intercepted. We owe it to our users to protect the security, privacy, and integrity of their data — all data must be encrypted while in flight and at rest. Historically, concerns over performance have been the common excuse to avoid these obligations, but today that is a false dichotomy. Let’s dispel some myths.

Is TLS Fast Yet?

Ilya Gregorovich is a developer who has been working on new ways to improve the performance of web sites by focussing on IP protocols like TCP and HTTP. Protocols like SPDY have led to the proposal for HTTP/2 to use TLS encryption as standard to dramatically improve the security AND performance.

This website answers the questions as to why TLS can be faster and more secure that the current protocols in use today.

And I highly recommend reading the book, High Performance Browser Networking which changed many of my preconceptions about network performance and value in a web centric network.

Also, it should be noted that pervasive use of HTTP/2 will be a major reduction in the usefulness of QOS because traffic classification is limited on a encrypted protocol.

Note: I will also be touching on this topic in my Interop Session “WAN Optimization: Challenges and Options” where there are major changes in store for technologies that rely on protocol interception like WAN Accelerators, Proxy Servers, Traffic Shapers etc.

Internets of Interest for 24th February 2014

24th February 2014 By bookmarks Filed Under: Bookmarks

 

Collection of useful, relevant or just fun places on the Internets for 24th February 2014 and a bit commentary about what I’ve found interesting about them:

Cisco Nexus 9000 NX-API | Keeping It Classless – Matt Oswalt blogs about using the Cisco Nexus 9000 API. While I don’t believe that everyone will configure their network from an array in Python script, it is well worth understanding how an API can configure a device:

Okay so maybe I geeked out a little bit, but hopefully you stuck with me until the end and saw that this is a very dynamic and easy to use method for retrieving data from the Nexus 9000 switch. You could do all kind of things with this data – maybe make routing changes once this data is in a nice array like above, or maybe just log changes to the routing table as they happen. The possibilities are endless. The important thing is that Cisco now has parity with other vendors that have been offering this type of API for a while.


CEF Secret Attributes, Part 3 – Danel Massameno blogs at the Packet Pushers about CEF in Cisco IOS routers. This is the last in 3 parts and well worth reading.

In Part 1 we saw we can mark prefixes in CEF with certain attributes that might give us interesting things to play with. In Part 2 we found we could track traffic patterns with the traffic_index tag. We will now turn our attention to the qos-group parameters


Using VRFs to maintain security zones in an Layer 3 datacenter network – Paul Zugnoni blogs at Packet Pushers about using VRFs for L3 Isolation in the Data Centre.

However, a few risks in deploying popular layer 2 overlay technologies are vendor-lockdown, scalability, specialized hardware required to mitigate bottleneck points, and predictability of traffic load. These were enough concerns to drive me to come up with the solution I present here in my first Packet Pushers blog.

SDN will replace nasty hacks like VRF in the longer term but if you need to deliver it today, this article will introduce you to the ideas.


Where Are All the Operators in the IETF Standards Process? – Chris grundeman from the IETF asking for Service Providers to participate in IETF standards process.

In a perfect world, operators would be part of the IETF process and these protocols would always work great. After all, who better to influence the way people design, use, and manage the Internet than the folks who run the networks? Wouldn’t it be great if operators always knew when their input was needed and were always able to provide it in a timely manner?

Servive Providers / Carriers believe that they their networks are different and have created their own forums such as MEF, NANOG and so forth. The result is that they build niche standards to suit their own needs that don’t get wider support. The trend to commoditisation will prevent this in the future as commodity products do not support esoteric use cases. Time for service providers to engage as one community.


Voice Engineers Will Rule the SDN World | kontrolissues – Chris Young makes some good points that voice engineers, as a broad group, might be well positioned to make the transition to a software centric network.

As much as people like to make fun of voice engineers, most of them have an unbelievable level of foundational networking. They may not be the strongest in BGP or MPLS, but in my experience they understand the basics of networking at a level that most of the other sub-genre’s don’t get to. You don’t ever want to get into an argument about QoS with a voice engineer., We understand spanning-tree like nobodies business. In fact, because of the complete lack of tolerance of RTP for any packet loss or delay, we have had to become really really good at performance tuning the network to ensure that every packet arrives in order in less than 150ms ( G.114 standard people!).

FWIW, I still hate IP Telephony. Aside from call centres or other limited use cases, just give everyone a mobile phone and lets be done with desk phones. It’s cheaper.


Three light beams that emanated from OpenDaylight Summit – Vimal Suba on the Cisco Blog attended the OpenDaylight Summit:

Of all these topics, here are the three important themes that stood out to me

The points are well made about the progress of ODL

  1. The importance of an Open Source, community initiative for SDN
  2. What and how much to Standardize (North and South bound APIs)
  3. Adoption challenges, and a consultative-led solution

Excellent thoughts and commentary.


How to be a [good] Network Engineer (and network engineer appreciation day) – Nick Buraglio puts some thinking on the role of the network engineer –

Love what you do. In IT the only constant is change. Embrace it. Learn new technology. Think outside of the box and step outside of your comfort zone. Never be comfortable with “good enough”. Strive to know more about whatever it is you are working on. Be positive. Help others learn. Don’t worry about credit and recognition and just do great work, if you do the rest will work itself out.


Kicking tires on Cumulus Linux – Willard Denis gets his fingers onto Cumulus Networks software on a whitebox switch and talks about his experience:

So, I ended my last blog post with a wish – “hopefully someday I can get a real switch running Cumulus to play with ;-)” Well, as it turns out, that post was somewhat popular, and caught the attention of some folks at Cumulus Networks (who kindly RT’d my tweet publicizing the post – thanks!) A day later, I was informed that I’d been placed on the list for one of their demo switches that was making the rounds. And about a month later, I received an equipment travel case with a Delta Networks 6448r switch bolted inside:


Speaking: How To Be A Tech Blogger – Interop Las Vegas

23rd February 2014 By Greg Ferro Filed Under: Blog, Writing and Speaking

I’m really pleased that Interop have asked me to talk more about blogging and to go deeper on the topic and the result is a new session – Interop Las Vegas – How to Be a Tech Blogger . Here is the extract:

Join popular tech blogger and Packet Pushers Podcast host Greg Ferro for an informative session on tech blogging. Greg will discuss his strategies for writing, how to attract an audience with social media, how to work with editors, and how to maintain your independence. He’ll also explore the potential benefits that can come from blogging. A more visible profile creates new career choices, event invitations, opportunities to review products, and maybe even a little extra income.

My goal for the session is share some of my experiences, methods I use and lessons that I have learned (good & bad) over the last five years. Even though blogging and podcasting  is a lot of work, I’ve received so much more back from the community and positively changed my professional and personal life.

I hope inspire you to start sharing with the community because that gives the community a chance to give you something back.

interop-how-be-a-tech-blogger-1
Current Outline for the “How to Be a Tech Blogger” Presentation

Interop Las Vegas – Mar 31- Apr 4

Interop New York - I talk with my hands. Not joking when we say that we "wave our hands at the virtual whiteboard" on the show.

My other session in the Infrastructure Track at Interop Las Vegas on Mar 31-Apr 4.

  • Building the Physical Network for the Software-Defined Data Center – 3.5 hours – http://www.interop.com/lasvegas/schedule-builder/session-id/6
  • The Pending Death of WAN Optimization 1 hour – http://www.interop.com/lasvegas/schedule-builder/session-id/102
  • Will SDN Make Me Homeless? 1 hour – http://www.interop.com/lasvegas/schedule-builder/session-id/85

Response: Help! My Big Expensive Router Is Really Expensive!

21st February 2014 By Greg Ferro Filed Under: Response

At NANOG 60 this happened – “Help! My Big Expensive Router Is Really Expensive!”

Over the past few years, we’ve seen the data center switch market explode with commodity chips, open source software, and the concepts of SDN. All we have seen in the routing space has been bigger routers that need more power, cooling, and space on a curve that doesn’t match the data center behind it. We seek to explore: A) Why this is the case B) What we can do as network designers and operators to maximize the investment in the platforms we have C) What we can do to ensure we’re not investing in a dying platform D) What alternatives do we have to Big Expensive Routers that are really expensive?

This PDF covers the key points comparing merchant & custom silicon. Great resource for people who are facing the challenge and looking for some information to understand the differences.

Direct Link to PDF: https://www.nanog.org/sites/default/files/wednesday.general.temkin.panel.pdf

Website: https://www.nanog.org/meetings/nanog60/agenda

 

 

Musing: Working for Companies in Financial Trouble

20th February 2014 By Greg Ferro Filed Under: Blog, Musing

Your employer is having financial problems. There is a lot of pressure to do “more with less”, to pull together and “do the deals”, close the sales before end of quarter. But really, what do you owe your employer in the modern era ? What is best for you ? This situation is one where the modern paradigm of fail fast, fail often and fail early applies.

Whose Team Are You On ?

I’ve been freelancing for more than a decade. When companies hit a bad spot, they often turn to short-term options to hold things together and contract people like me. This is a simple financial decision because if things get worse (as they usually do) then I can be easily removed from the bottom line. Permanent employees are expensive to remove.

Here is what I’ve learned from working with “salary-people” in failing companies.

When a company hits downturn, make decision early about where you want to be. The company will reduce headcount, cut products and reduce spending to control costs. This will lead to your professional life being less pleasant. And what about the personal costs ?

Does Your Employer Care About You ?

Teams. Modern corporate life is all about team. There are many good aspects of teamwork but there is a less obvious downside “good of the team”. The team leader makes decisions about who is on the team. And that might not include you. But being part of a team also means that you choose whether to join the team or to stay in the team. The team will certainly survive without you. That’s why teams are important to companies, its a survival mechanism for the company.

In modern employment, you should be planning to change teams. You definitely should change teams and join others to learn new stuff, have new experiences. Whether you do that by changing employers is mostly irrelevant (aside from the annoying paperwork).

The Personal Cost of a Busted Company

And finally, there is the personal cost of working for a company in decline. It’s a misery. Being surrounded by failures of every sort is not good – people, money, business or whatever. If you are good employee, you take that with you when you leave the office. It will impact your personal life.

In modern IT companies, the smartest and best are often the fastest to recognise the problem and change teams to a different company. This means your team has good chance of being stuck with the leftovers making the situation worse.

It’s important to remember that you are a cost first and profit second. The cost of employing you (and your benefits) is an impact on profits. In dark times, employees are the second thing tossed out the door (the first is stationary and cheap office coffee). The thing that you do for the company will still make a profit for few more quarters.

The EtherealMind View

IT Infrastructure is an amazing career that lets you go anywhere. Between verticals, from vendor to customer, from sales to engineering. Skills are portable and reusable. If your employer is failing, they are probably failing to you too. In a modern capitalist market, your job matters about as much a as the first three sheets on a toilet roll. You can, and will, be discarded at anytime.fail-fast-often-early

Make a decision early about whether you should get out or stay. If you stay, then you are working to build success out of failure. If you go, then you are choosing to build your own success. That’s a good experience too. Just make sure you are making a conscious choice about your career.

There is a modern saying about “fail fast, fail often, fail early”. If your employer is in financial trouble make sure you exercise your rights fast, often and early and move to the next employer.

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Copyright Greg Ferro 2008-2017 - Thanks for reading my site, it's been good to have you here.

Opinions, Views and Ideas expressed here are my own and do not represent any employer, vendor or sponsor.Full disclosure