Archive of posts with tag 'SDN'

Efficiency vs Effectiveness

I’ve been wondering about how we’re approaching networking change. We know we need to make things better. Are we changing the ‘right’ things? I’ve got a feeling that we’re not,...

Brocade PyNOS Python Libraries

PyNOS v1.1 has been published. This is a python library that simplifies automating Brocade VDX systems. It is built on top of ncclient, and uses NETCONF to communicate with the VDX...

Networking Pioneers, Settlers and Town Planners

Can we broadly separate Networking into Pioneers, Settlers, and Town Planners? I’ve been thinking about how to apply Simon Wardley’s PST model to networking. This leads to thinking about how...

Brocade Certified vRouter Engineer

If you’ve visited the Brocade website recently, you’ve probably seen the “Free NFV Certification” banner. I signed up for this several months ago, but had put off completing the course. I...

The Next Step: Brocade

I am happy to announce that I am now a Product Manager at Brocade. This is a big move for me, and one I am very excited about. I will get to work...

You can't put the future on hold

This article is Part 7 in a 7-Part Series. Part 1 - CCIE Preparation: Commitment Part 2 - CCIE Preparation: Study Processes and Scheduling Part 3 - CCIE Preparation: Vendors...

VeloCloud & Information Brokerage

VeloCloud was the first presenter at Network Field Day 9. They are one of the new breed of SD-WAN vendors. I’m impressed by what they’re doing, and and the potential it...

NFD9: Cumulus Networks

Cumulus Networks gave a great presentation at Network Field Day 9. They presented their vision of how they’re working to improve networking. But they were also clear about what they...

NFD9 Prep: SD-WAN

Software Defined WAN, or SD-WAN, looks to be a theme of Network Field Day 9, with presenters such as CloudGenix and VeloCloud showing us their offerings. At first glance, SD-WAN...

Updated Big Switch Labs

Just a quick note to say that Big Switch have updated their demo lab system. This is an entirely virtual lab environment that simulates a Big Switch network. You can...

Big Switch Chaos Monkey Network Testing

Whenever you build a complex system, you need to test that it works as expected, including properly handling failures. It’s easy enough to do simple component failure testing, but harder to...

Cumulus in the Campus?

Recently I’ve been idly speculating about how campus networking could be shaken up, with different cost and management models. A few recent podcasts have inspired some thoughts on how Cumulus Networks might fit...

Using Firewalls for Policy Has Been a Disaster

Almost every SDN vendor today talks about policy, how they make it easy to express and enforce network policies. Cisco ACI, VMware NSX, Nuage Networks, OpenStack Congress, etc. This sounds...

HP SDN App Store Launches

HP’s SDN App Store has finally seen the light of day. This is intended to be a common platform for users and developers, to find and distributed real-world, practical SDN applications....

The Chassis Switch is Dead

The Chassis Switch is Dead. For most networks, chassis-based switches are no longer appropriate due to cost, inflexibility and risk. I see this as similar to servers, in that server...

Screen Scraping: Still Sucks

I’ve written before about “Why Screen Scraping Sucks.” Well, I can report that nothing has changed. It still sucks. This time I got caught out by the changed behaviour of...

Who Said Comments Are Dead?

We don’t see as many comments on blog posts these days, as most discussion has moved to other forums, such as Twitter or Google+. But this doesn’t mean that comments...

Is Cisco Struggling with Their ACI Messaging?

Cisco ACI represents a significant shift in the way we approach networking. This sort of shift will need massive customer education to explain their new vision. I’m getting the impression...

SDN for Enterprise

SDN is the buzzword du jour in the networking industry, but it’s hard to make sense of what it might mean for “normal” people. Here’s my take on what SDN...

Best of Interop - Look at the Categorisation

The “Best of Interop 2014 Finalists” have been announced. Pretty much all the products and technologies that you would expect, but I found the categorisation interesting. As you’d expect, there’s...

Certs vs Code: SDN Culture Clash?

SDN career certifications are starting to emerge. Network engineers are well-used to certifications, and use them as a badge of marking progress. But developers prefer to focus on code, not...

Network Automation - Stop Fighting It

Network Engineers should be embracing the idea of automating away the drudgery of running a network. They should be looking for ways to ensure the network can dynamically change its...

The HP SDN APP Store - It Might Just Work

HP has been laying out their SDN vision over the last few months. They want to develop a complete SDN ecosystem, including an Open Standards-based network that can integrate with...

SDN App Stores - My Network is not a Phone

I’ve been thinking a lot about HP’s SDN App Store approach. In case you missed it, HP’s vision is to deliver an App Store for SDN applications, similar to Apple’s...

Why Screen Scraping Sucks

There’s a lot of over-blown talk these days about APIs. Everyone wants one, everyone’s promising one. You might ask: “What’s the difference between using an API to put a port...

OpenFlow implications for network monitoring

I’ve been reading more about OpenFlow recently, and something that was pointed out to me was that OpenFlow offers features that could give us deeper insights into our traffic flows,...

How Long Before CCIE SDN?

Cisco made some announcements about SDN certifications at Cisco Live US, in June this year. These didn’t seem to get a lot of attention at the time, perhaps due to...

Managing Hybrid Networks

The most interesting talk I attended at HP Discover in Las Vegas this year was Ken Gott’s talk on “Management of Software Defined Networks and Hybrid Environments with HP IMC.”...