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Spirent Network Heroes 2012 – Nominations Open

Greg Ferro — Sun, 20 May 2012 08:29:00 +0000

Nominations for the UK Network Heroes award from Spirent are open. Since I've been asked to be a eminent judge, I'd like to see some of the best talent that UK has to offer stand up and be counted. The UK has a lot of great engineers and architects but they are rarely recognised. Here is your chance.

Poster: Cloud Price Negotiations

Greg Ferro — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 19:42:50 +0000

Some time ago, I was asked to work with a Cloud Provider to establish a budget for a potential project. I was unable to set a project budget because there was no way of capping the cost and meeting a budget. This is how the conversations with the sales representative went when discussing “How much [...]

Brocade HyperEdge and “Effortless Network”

Greg Ferro — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 21:30:49 +0000

Today, Brocade has announced "Effortless Network" strategy[^1] which is their first solid move into the campus networking and replacing the tired FastIron products with the Brocade ICX64x0 switches. It's a good start even if the strategy won't really get going until next year.

Ethernet Fabrics – Picking Apart the Threads at the Data Centre Fabric Symposium

Greg Ferro — Sun, 04 Mar 2012 15:06:26 +0000

“Ethernet Fabrics” or a “Data Centre Fabrics” have been much discussed and presented in the last couple of years. A Fabric is a good term for wide range of design methods, technologies and vendors technologies that build a new type of Ethernet network for the Data Centre – and they all compete for customer attention. This [...]

Defining Flow Forwarding Instead of Switch or Routing

Greg Ferro — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 21:28:54 +0000

Wherein I make the case OpenFlow like technologies are neither switching or routing. It's Flow Forwarding, or just Forwarding.

Predicting What Will Not Be Big in 2012

Greg Ferro — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 19:05:32 +0000

I've been working on making some predictions about 2012 and networking. I like to do this in the year of 2012 (not 2011 like everyone else) and I like to go further than anyone else and predict what WILL NOT be big in 2012.

Updated: Webinar on SDN and OpenFlow on Feb 7th – Now With More “Space”

Greg Ferro — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 21:29:01 +0000

The original Webex session for this event was booked out within two weeks and we closed the event. We have increased the webinar ‘seats’ and have re-opened the bookings. This post is a repeat of the earlier so that you can sign up to the event if you missed out. I’m pleased to announce that [...]

My Networking Beliefs

Greg Ferro — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 11:51:54 +0000

Someone wrote me and asked "Greg, What do you believe is the future of Networking". Here is my (mostly) humorous response.

VRRP. CARP. Open Standards and Royalties on LC Connectors

Greg Ferro — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 21:05:45 +0000

In which I look at CARP vs VRRP, the nature of open standards and closed source fibre optic connectors that you pay royalties on, but you probably don't know about.

Merchant Silicon and Vendor Software – The Hype in 2012

Greg Ferro — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 22:01:35 +0000

The thing about merchant silicon is how far it has penetrated the network vendors. In fact, it's getting difficult switches that don't have the same Network Processor inside as any other vendor. Networking hardware is looking like servers hardware - glue some chips and then market the heck out of your pretty colours.

Can Fibre Optic Ethernet Cables Be Longer Than the Standard ?

Greg Ferro — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 19:41:10 +0000

Short Answer is "It depends, but usually yes." Long answer follows with a discussion of launch power, receiver sensitivity, and cable losses.

Dear Network Santa, for Christmas Can I Have ……

Greg Ferro — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 20:37:17 +0000

I'm sitting on Santa's knee, and telling him how good I've and been and what I would like for Christmas. When you say it like that, it's kind of creepy.

Webinar on SDN & OpenFlow – Sponsored by Big Switch – Open Attendance

Greg Ferro — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 18:26:31 +0000

I'm pleased to announce that Big Switch have agreed to sponsor SDN & OpenFlow Webinar on February 7th, 2012 and that the event will be free and open to anyone to attend. Are you a Network Architect or Designer ? Are you responsible for strategy, long term vision, or simply keeping track of upcoming technologies ? If so, you will need to know more about OpenFlow and Software Defined Networking and how it impacts the future of Networking in software and hardware. And now, thanks to sponsorship from BigSwitch Networks, anyone can attend.

EtherealMind’s Fashion Tips for Network Engineering Men

Greg Ferro — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 19:30:51 +0000

Just because you don't speak to "customers" or "the public" it's still necessary to look like you are a professional and take pride in your work.

Poster: The Eight Levels of Vendor Acceptance

Greg Ferro — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 07:57:47 +0000

The answer that you get from your vendor is never a __YES__ , or, not directly. This handy guide is the eight levels of vendor acceptance where answers

Switch Fabrics: Fabric Arbitration and Buffers

Greg Ferro — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 19:30:13 +0000

In the article, “What Is the Definition of a Switch Fabric ?” on Switch Fabrics I looked at how a Crossbar switching fabric allow for concurrent circuit forwarding and how this is used to build a fabric. In most cases, frames would be received and forwarded from an input to an output, as show in [...]

Poster – Cisco VPN Client Licensing

Greg Ferro — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 08:41:25 +0000

I'm more than annoyed about paying for IPsec VPN client licensing. Uncle John screws up the company and now we have to pay for it. This calls for a poster.

Network Evolution and Hierarchy of Needs

Greg Ferro — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 10:34:15 +0000

I've often pondered the stages of Network Deployment and Integration within companies - how they progress from the one stage of network complexity to the next. And if you work at enough different organisations you realise that they all companies operate in similar ways, and have similar adoption of Networking. From an IT infrastructure perspective, most organisations use the same basic service models. In a sense, networking provides the human equivalent of the nervous system which allows the myriad corporate organs to communicate, signal and co-operate. This, of course, leads to consideration of the psychological perception of Networking. In a recent blog, Alvaro Retana from HP (co-author of a number of outstanding textbooks including Cisco Press with Russ White and some others that are not vendor specific and Cisco CCAr/CCDE etc) wrote a blog post that is similar to something in my "to finish" list where he takes the Maslows Hierarchy of Needs and adapts it to how Networks are part of the corporate Hierarchy of Needs.

Juniper QFabric – My Speculations

Greg Ferro — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 17:00:30 +0000

Ivan has blogged about how he thinks Juniper QFabric works Speculation: This is How I Would Build a QFabric, while I agree in terms of the software elements ( at least, they look like good guesses to me), I would like to discuss more about the hardware:

There are three components in a QFabric kit list :

Interconnect
Edge Switch
Manager

Juniper Junosphere – Missed Opportunity for Enterprise Market

Greg Ferro — Sun, 29 May 2011 19:32:40 +0000

Juniper announced their Junosphere emulator recently and have been smugly telling everyone how wonderful it is. Except it isn't. Here is my take FWIW.

OpenFlow – Why It Can Cross the Adoption Gap

Greg Ferro — Thu, 12 May 2011 16:43:06 +0000

OpenFlow is project coming out of Stanford University that offers a new way of using software to manage networks. The term "Software Defined Networking" sums it up. The question is whether OpenFlow will become mainstream. While Ivan at IOSHINTS isn't so sure, I'm a bit more bullish. Here's why.

The Drivers

There are a number of key aspects of OpenFlow that may help to cross the adoption gap.

University Deployment

The first is University networks are a perfect fit for this technology. Matt Davy from Indiana University has 4000 wireless access points and over 3000 switches in a single network - and managing the configurations on this network is a signifcant challenge. They see OpenFlow as a way to apply configuration more consistently to devices _anywhere_ in the network. And the educational kudos that a University can get from adding it to the CompSci PhD and master students means that more Universities are likely to jump on board. Note that OpenFlow can work alongside existing networks, it's not a complete In my experience, technologies that Universities adopt and deploy tend to move into the Enterprise. Enterprise networks are reluctant to adopt new technologies, but something that has been proven in Universities can offer a level of comfort, provided that the gains from the technology are significantly valuable to their business.

Mobile Carriers

As protocol, TCP/IP isn't very good at being billed. There isn't any accounting data or extensions that assist telephone companies to charge by the packet. OpenFlow offers a framework that has opportunities for control, management and chargeback of data.

Pushing Network OS Architecture With Arista EOS

Greg Ferro — Wed, 11 May 2011 16:10:28 +0000

I'm delivering a webinar with Arista Network on their EOS architecture where we take a long, detailed and nerdy look at their software architecture with some of their top developers.

HP A10500 FlexiCampus – Action Pics

Greg Ferro — Tue, 10 May 2011 15:29:50 +0000

I wanted take a quick look at the guts of the A10500 switch because its got some interesting features. And since no one else in the press even looked at the box, I feel it's necessary to do some nerd action photos with the line cards.

HP Interop Annoucements – The Flexi Strategy

Greg Ferro — Tue, 10 May 2011 13:51:08 +0000

HP Networking had some announcements today at InterOp. It was a big media event with cameras, live broadcasts, and some interesting industry figures are in the room. Here's my take on the strategy, I'll post some more on the actual product announcements in a separate post.