
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.
4th February 2012
Network design, architecture, thinking, working. Tech.

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.
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.
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.
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.
Because nothing says “Cloud Computering” like a Wireless LAN Controller.
I’ve been catching up on the Juniper QFabric announcement from yesterday. While I’m still attempting to digest the ramifications of the technology and the methodology that this brings to the Data Centre let’s step back and take a wider look at what this means for the ethernet switching marketplace. It’s clear the Ethernet switching is no longer a single marketplace.
I don’t always get to use my own computer. And Corporate Desktops don’t let you change your settings. I had to use someone else’s Windows computer today to look up Cisco’s website for documentation.
AHHHAHAAAHAHH MY eyes.
Look, I get that Uncle John wants us to use the web site so he makes more profits (read: lower support costs if customers do it themselves), which isn’t a bad idea since most of us know what we want anyway and don’t particularly want anyone else to help us out. And Cisco has tried to produce a lot of documentation – its a big part of our relationship. So there is lots of good content there and I spend a lot of time looking at the site. But lets keep it working. We need to put engineers back in charge of the design and ditch the bloody hipsters who are trying to be as offensive as possible – obviously their mothers hated them because they seem to need a lot of attention.
This week saw HP announced the cessation of development of their IP Telephony product – VCX – that was acquired as part of the 3Com acquisition. Any impacts ?
In previous years I have not really spend a lot of time in the world of solutions, because it’s not been overly interesting. This year I decided to spend some time walking the floor and looking for interesting and new products and therefore I wanted to cover what I found interesting this year.
It’s common among certain companies for their sales people and engineers to talk about ‘winning’ or ‘beating’ their competition, or ‘slamming’ their counterparts. I want to take a minute to point out how puerile this is, and how offensive it is to be a customer to this type of high school thinking.
Copyright Greg Ferro 2008-2012 - When people agree with me, I think I must be wrong.