With all of the current trends coming in to the industry around policy based network configuration, network automation and controller value add, do you understand why and where the trends are coming from? With organisations, consultancy outfits and independents struggling to see where things are going in the industry, it’s imperative that as an industry we steer eduation and … [Read more...]
Archives for September 2014
Big Switch Tap Fabric
Before we go in to observed trends, let's put some context on this post and definitions around monitoring. Network monitoring and tapping, this can be described as "packet capture, packet and session analysis and NetFlow generation with analytics". Tap fabrics typically provide a means of extracting packets from a network but not so much the analysis. Tools like Wireshark, … [Read more...]
White Box Switching: Goodbye Trident II, Hello Cavium XPliant
Original Design Manufacturers (ODMs) that produce incumbent profit busting white box switching technology could soon be releasing the next wave of programmable networking based on technology from a silicon company best known for it's encryption products. Cavium have released the XPliant chipset which it acquired from a $90m purchase earlier this year. This chipset comes in four … [Read more...]
Cisco ACI: Allowing the smarts to scale
As horizontal scalability demands increase for policy based fabrics such as Cisco's ACI and performance demands push the development of high speed Ethernet standards like 25G, 50G, 100G and beyond in to 400G, how that data is pushed and pulled on the fabric begins to become a problem. In the words of Scotty, devices of today "canne take any more" due to issues with physics, … [Read more...]
Network Field Day 8 – #NFD8
After watching the Tech Field Day (TFD) events for a while, I decided to fill out the form and apply to be a delegate. With the events being based in the USA, me being based in the UK and my status not being at the power blogger level of the likes of Ethan Banks, Greg Ferro or Ivan Pepelnjak, the perceived chances of actually being selected to go were negligible to none. So how … [Read more...]
Network Aware Software: Rubbish idea or OpenDayLight Function?
“Sir, Skynet is self aware…” Not really the line anyone wants to hear, especially after watching the Terminator films! This however isn’t what this post is about, so if you’re a bit of a rebel, fear not. No network vendor branded termination thing (maybe other than poor documentation or code) will result in your death. Since the era of the abacus, little … [Read more...]
