A few weeks ago I decided to join the SDN group on LinkedIn and quickly discovered the biggest problem of SDN – many people, who try to authoritatively talk about it, have no idea what they’re talking about. Here’s a gem (coming from a “network architect”) I found in one of the discussions:

The SDN local controller can punt across to remote datacenters using not only IP, but even UDP over MPLS

Do I have to explain how misguided that statement is?

Whenever you talk to a new startup evaluating whether you’d consider including their products in your network, don’t forget to ask them a fundamental question: “does your product support IPv6?”

If they reply “Nobody has ever asked for it”, it’s time to turn around and run away.

The OSCON keynote by Simon Wardley explains a number of things, including (lack of) enterprise IPv6 adoption. Enjoy!

In May 2015 I invited Dinesh Dutt to talk about Cumulus Linux and its typical use cases on an update session of the Data Center Fabrics Architecture webinar.

As expected, he started with the big picture: what are Cumulus Networks and Cumulus Linux all about?

It’s hard to visit an IT journal web site without stumbling upon an SDN fairy tale. Here’s another one:

The idea is to cut away the manual process of setting up new firewalls, load balancers and other network appliances, and instead open the door to provisioning a new network infrastructure within a few minutes.

And why exactly is it that you can’t do that today?

35 years ago, mainframes, single-protocol networks (be it SNA or DECnet), and centralized architectures that would make hard-core SDN evangelists gloat with unbridled pride were all the rage. If you’re old enough to remember IBM SNA, you know what I’m talking about.

A few years later, everything changed.

I published the second part of my Designing Scalable Web Applications course on my free content web site.

These presentations focus more on the application-level technologies (client- and server side), but I’m positive you’ll find some useful content in the caching and scale-out applications with load balancing sections.

Gartner has updated their networking hype cycle. Not surprisingly:

• Ethernet switching fabrics are on the slope of enlightenment (finally – we’ve been educating networking engineers on what they really are for half a decade);
• SDN is well on its way into the trough of disillusionment (shameless plug: I guess not enough people attended real-life SDN workshops) and whitebox switching is going the same way;
• SD-WAN is nearing the peak of inflated expectations;
• FCoE and Long-Distance vMotion will be dead before they reach the plateau.

Gartner won’t give you free access to the graph, but you’ll find it in an article published on The Register.

One of the participants of the Carrier Ethernet LinkedIn group asked a great question:

When we install a virtual-router of any vendor over an ordinary sever (having general-purpose microprocessor), can it really compete with a physical-router having ASICs, Network Processors…?

Short answer: No … and here’s my longer answer (cross-posted to my blog because not all of my readers participate in that group).

Like all other ipSpace.net webinars, the IPv6 Microsegmentation webinar starts with a brief description of the problem we’re trying to solve: the IPv6 first-hop security challenges.

For an overview of this problem, watch this free video from the IPv6 microsegmentation webinar, for more details, watch the IPv6 Security webinar.