After deciding to take a slightly longer coffee break I went through the list of outstanding projects trying to figure out which ones I could complete in first half of 2021, which ones I’ll get to “eventually” and what’s a lost cause.

Guest Speakers

We squeezed as many guest speakers as we could into the first half of 2021. Here’s what we managed to do:

• Deep dive into NSX-T Federation by Jerome Catrouillet is complete, and concludes the NSX-T 3.0 update process.
• The Kubernetes Deep Dive is complete. It covers Kubernetes basics, services, details of Container Network Interface, and service mesh.
• The last session of Cisco ACI Deep Dive on June 24th covered automation and REST API.
• Rachel Traylor started an intensive course on reliability theory
• Dinesh Dutt dived deep into IP routing design in 3-tier leaf-and-spine topology, and the differences between using OSPF and BGP.
• (unplanned) Dinesh Dutt described the intricacies of multi-vendor data center EVPN deployments.
• (totally unplanned) Javier Antich discussed the good, the bad, and the ugly aspects of AI/ML in Networking. I had this idea on the back burner for ages but couldn’t find anyone with wide-enough knowledge to deliver it. Javier did an excellent job ;)
• Cristian Sirbu is doing an extensive update of the configuration and state management automation tools part of Network Automation Tools webinar.

Missed the Boat

• We did not manage to redo the NETCONF/YANG material.

Webinar Updates

There are a few things I simply have to update to feel good (last status update on June 26, 2021):

• Networking part of Introduction to Cloud Computing webinar is complete.
• Ansible webinar already got updated material on task includes, roles, collections (published). I will also redo the section on Ansible debugger, and add a short intro to Jinja2 includes. I won’t however waste any more time describing their N+1-st attempt to get networking modules right.
• The network automation curriculum is pretty well rounded, what’s missing is a deep dive into network automation concepts (infrastructure-as-code, data models, data stores, single source of truth, intent-based networking…). We started with data models and covered data stores in May 2021. More to come in autumn.
• Gateway Load Balancer and Network Firewall were added to AWS webinar. Still missing: Transit Gateway Connect Peers.
• Virtual WAN and Virtual Hubs were added to Azure webinar. Still missing: Azure Firewall.
• Miha Markočič has developed tons of AWS new automation examples (already published).

Still on To-Do List

• I have to add more recommended design information to Designing Active-Active and Disaster Recovery Data Centers webinar

Long-term Projects

I will keep working on How Networks Really Work webinar. The current plan is to cover the details of routing protocols including fun stuff like LFA, rLFA, TI-LFA, PIC, NSF, SSO..

I will also add HTTP/2, HTTP/3 and QUIC to the TCP, HTTP and SPDY webinar. I will get it done – I just don’t know when it might happen.

Potential Update Candidates

These webinars would deserve an update, but I won’t make any promises:

• VXLAN Technical Deep Dive would need a major rewrite. It still mentions NSX-MH and Nexus 1000v
• Introduction to Virtualized Networking is in no better shape
• Network Function Virtualization webinar would need an update on fast packet switching in Linux. If only I’d be able to persuade Thomas Graf to do it ;)
• Data Center Infrastructure for Networking Engineers needs an update of the Network Reference Architecture section (and no, I will not touch the storage part of it)

What I can promise is that I WILL NOT spend any more time going through the vendor data sheets to update the product overview parts of Data Center Fabric Architectures. Creating those updates was one of the worst content creation experience I ever had.

Not Going to Happen

I had a few more ideas on the back burner. They might happen in another lifetime ;)

• OpenStack Networking
• Open Networking on Linux
• BGP Security and MANRS

Have I missed anything? Please send me an email (if you’re a subscriber you know how to reach me, otherwise use the Contact form).

Revision History

2021-06-26

• Completed Kubernetes, ACI, and Reliability webinars
• Unplanned webinars: AI/ML in networking, multi-vendor EVPN deployments
• Expanded routing design part of leaf-and-spine fabrics webinar
• Added Gateway Load Balancer and Network Firewall to AWS webinar
• Added Virtual WAN and Virtual Hubs to Azure webinar
• Cristian Sirbu is doing the Network Automation Tools update session.

2021-03-03

• Introduction to cloud networking is complete.
• Reliability course has started.
• Data models part of automation concepts is mostly complete, more to come in late spring.
• Kubernetes Deep Dive is progressing nicely.

2021-01-30

Updated with a few more things to fix found in January 2021

• Have to add Virtual Hub to Azure webinar
• Ansible webinar needs an updated debugging playbooks section.

Status update:

• We completed NSX-T federation sessions in January.
• Ansible Creating Reusable Code section has been updated.
• We have the final webinar outline for Automation Concepts and extensions to Reliability Theory.
• Miha Markočič completed AWS examples.