Collection of useful, relevant or just fun places on the Internets for 13th May 2012 and a bit commentary about what I’ve found interesting about them:
Searching for an SDN Definition: What Is Software-Defined Networking? – Network Computing – Mike Fratto at NetworkComputing.com :
I’m using VMware as an example, but there are and will be other vendors, particularly in networking, that will try to co-opt SDN to mean everything from simple overlays to API/SDK-enabled configuration control, which does not define the network but simplifies hardware management.
VMware came out strong with articles in Wired and Gigaom this week that made hilarious reading. Mike points out the SDN is defined, it’s clear and it’s customer led. Vendors have lost control of the conversation here.
This article is a very good read about what it SDN as well. Mike captures more of the ethos and value than most people.
What the Battle for “SDN” Reveals | Twilight in the Valley of the Nerds – Brad Casemore :
If the ONF hadn’t existed, if hadn’t already established an incontrovertible definition of SDN, the old “change the meaning, change the game” play might have worked.
This is true. You can see this happening right now with Cisco attempting to co-opt TRILL with FabricPath. Or Alcatel-Lucent /Huawei attempting to get some interest in SPB-M. It’s a dirty form of marketing that VMware has recently started too.
IPv6 – It’s Not An Option — Evil Routers – Jeremy needs to write more :
Yep, BT, the company with “vast experience on a global scale”, the ones who are offering up recommendations from their “experts”, the ones who “can help you through your migration plan”, are not even running IPv6 on their public network. Since most of the real experts that I’ve talked to generally recommend beginning your IPv6 deployment with your public-facing servers, it’s probably safe to assume that they’re not running IPv6 internally either. That doesn’t make me feel very confident about their services, what about you?
Company caught with pants down in the playground!
Relaxation & Creativity: The Science of Sleeping on It | Moments of Genius | Big Think – Research that seems to prove that sleeping on a problem helps with a solution.
After one week, Barrett found that about half of the students dreamt about their problem and about a quarter dreamt a solution. She concluded that although her subjects were unrepresentative of the general population, (they were already interested in dreams and had been exposed to some problem-solving success stories before the study) John Steinbeck was right when he said that, “a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it.”
I agree. Sometimes it takes a few days for me to work through design problems. Most of my answers come in the morning after some sleep.
Rational Survivability » Overlays: Wasting Away Again In Abstractionville… - Christopher Hoff:
The Enterprise, when considering “moving to the Cloud” generally takes one of two approaches depending upon culture, leadership, business goals, maturity and sophistication:
This is a good piece that attempts to highlight the complexity of enterprise networks. At the core of it, I think that Chris is trying to say that running overlay networks over MPLS (an overlay network of it’s own) isn’t going to work.
Transparent Bridging (aka L2 Switching) Scalability Issues « ipSpace.net by @ioshints - Ivan Pepelnjak right on target, as always:
A common theme in your talks is that L2 does not scale. Do you mean that Transparent (Learning) Bridging does not scale due to its flooding? Or is there something else that does not scale?
Pwn Your Own Network - Michelle “Mrs Y” Chubirka:
First, by regularly checking your network with a pentesting dropbox, you can be more proactive in finding security issues.
is making the case that hacking our own network is good security technique. I agree.
Nerds see it differently – My personal blog overlaps with my technical blog here:
I do. Nerds like me see the both the pretty woman and the Fibonacci sequence in the golden ratio of the spiral.
SPDY Performance on Mobile Networks – Make the Web Faster — Google Developers – Google SPDY team:
SPDY shows promise to improve the performance of web page load times over mobile networks. Of course, its necessary to look across many more sites and a wider range of network conditions, but in this controlled experiment we find that SPDY yields a mean page load time reduction of 23% over HTTP, yielding a speedup of 1.3x. Website operators should consider using SPDY to speed up access to their sites from mobile devices.
I expected more from SPDY somehow. 205 doesn't _sound_ like a lot. But a 1 gigabit per second that gets, say, 20% less loaded is real money saved and the performance benefits on server duty cycles are also important. I think SPDY will take a long time to get adoption but will probably make it.
How Romanian Fortune Tellers Used Google To Fleece Victims – Slashdot – Slashdot article:
Two fortune tellers are being investigated, after the Romanian police uncovered that they have utilized some extraordinary help in their clairvoyant acts. The pair used information collected from internet search and social networks to gain the trust of their customers, claiming that they could see their personal data through their crystal ball.
All sorts of uses for social media that you haven't thought of.
