Most interesting article in this batch: Ethernet Taps - Don't Get Me Started by Chris Marget, focusing on Ethernet taps: passive, active, aggregators, L1 switches ...

And here are the other interesting links I found in somewhat random order:

Data Center

Possibilities of OpenFlow/SDN Applications: Jason listed five very interesting applications that could benefit from OpenFlow/SDN. The gotcha - having per-flow state anywhere close to the network core will never scale.

Email Alerts on Interface State Changes: Arista's EOS has something similar to Cisco IOS Event Manager … the "only" difference is you can use Bash, Perl or Python instead of Tcl or something resembling Basic from ZX81 (aka EEM applets).

Nexus vPC Orphan Ports: Orphan ports (servers connected to just one of the switches in an MLAG pair) are a major pain … but I never realized the attached servers could experience a total disaster if the vPC peer link fails.

Notes on Scalability: I know I'm preaching to the wrong choir here, but if you do manage to push these ideas across to the apps development groups, your life will be so much easier.

The Ascendancy of the Application Layer Threat: In the never-ending tug-of-war, the DoS attacks have moved from TCP stacks to HTTP servers, requiring a different type of protection - load balancers (oops, Application Delivery Controllers) instead of firewalls.

Disabling MAC Learning on 7124/48 S/SX: You want to turn your low-latency 10GE switch into a hub? No problem, Arista provides an EOS extension that can meet those "special needs".

What Does FCoE Have To Do With VM Mobility?: You know I'm constantly ranting about the futility of unlimited VM mobility. Scott Lowe has described the storage perspective, and it looks as futile as the networking one.

NodeFlow: An OpenFlow Controller Node Style: An OpenFlow controller written in JavaScript. Let the fun begin!

Internet and IPv6

ISP Column - January 2012: Another Geoff Huston's article full of statistics, some of them very interesting, others less so. The most relevant one: prediction of IPv4 exhaustion date by region (RIR).

Why Your Network Should Go IPv6 Only: A well-argumented push for IPv6-only access networks. Must read.

Security and VPNs

The Fundamental Problem with Traditional Inbound Protection: Yet another article with the now-familiar theme: firewalls can't protect us any longer because most of the attacks happen above HTTP.

MPLS L3VPN and Summarized Loopback Routes: A great (and lengthy) explanation of why we shouldn't summarize loopbacks in MPLS/VPN networks by my good friend @icemarkom. Particularly loved the static FEC-to-label bindings at the end ... if only he would add a few static MPLS labels in the P-routers :)

Other topics

It Depends: You might have thought "it depends" is a simple cop-out answer. Think again ... after reading this article.

Welcome to the Jungle: A fantastic article - starting with modern computer architectures, moving through the "end of Moore's law", explaining why multi-core iPad 2 is part of the same trend as AWS ... and it goes on and on and on ...

On insecurity and writing: This is a must-read for all my friends who endlessly hesitate trying to decide whether to write another blog post or not. You know who you are ;)

Successfully Managing Talented Technical People: Another large dose of commonsense from Ethan Banks. Highly recommended reading.

Call a Spade a Spade: Fancy marketing terminology is obviously not new. Ted Nelson was writing about it in 1974.

And don't forget: interesting links are now available as a shared Evernote notebook. Enjoy!