A Long Trip down the Memory Lane
True old-timers might appreciate the analogies I got while writing the Network Infrastructure as Code article. Let’s start with “do you remember this thingy?”
If you recognized the state-of-the-art (in those days) box in the picture, you might be able to relate to this screenshot:
It works, but is it scalable?
This is pretty close to some SDN architectures I was privileged to see in the last three years.
Virtual Routers 101
I was asked to do a presentation at the recent Slovenian NOG (SINOG) meeting. I did an SDN one at the previous meeting, making NFV the next obvious choice… but I decided to put an interesting spin on it and focused on virtual routers.
Infrastructure as Code Actually Makes Sense
When I heard people talking about “networking infrastructure as code” I dismissed that as yet another Software-Defined-Everything one-controller-to-rule-it-all hype. Boy was I wrong.
Snabb Switch and NFV on OpenStack in Software Gone Wild
Last September I received a peculiar tweet from Luke Gorrie pointing me to a software switch pushing 200 Gbps through an Intel server literally hours after I’d watched the Deutsche Telekom Terastream presentation, so I mentioned Luke’s Snabb Switch as a potential performance solution in an email to Ian Farrer… and before Ian managed to reply, Luke was already working for Deutsche Telekom.
Unnumbered OSPF Interfaces in Quagga (and Cumulus)
Carlos Mendioroz sent me an interesting question about unnumbered interfaces in Cumulus Linux and some of the claims they make in their documentation.
TL&DR: Finally someone got it! Kudos for realizing how to use an ancient trick to make data center fabrics easier to deploy (and, BTW, the claims are exaggerated).
Why is IPv6 layer-2 security so complex (and how to fix it)
After the excellent IPv6 security presentation Eric Vyncke had @ 9th Slovenian IPv6 summit someone asked me: “Why is IPv6 first-hop security so complex? It looks like the developers of IPv6 protocol stack tried to make users anonymous and made everyone’s life complex while doing that.”
Well, he was totally surprised by my answer: “The real reason IPv6 first-hop security is so complex is the total mess we made of L2/L3 boundary.”
Bikeshed painting
Tired of endless debates discussing trivial matters? You're not alone (bonus point: a few pop-up windows every mail client should have).
To Get a Job Done Well, You Need Proper Training
The “bring Amazon Web Services mentality back home” blog post generated the expected comments, from “developers have no clue about networking or network services” to “we went through the whole thing and failed badly.”
Well, even though it might have seemed so, I didn’t advocate letting the developers go unchecked, I was just pointing out that double standards make no sense.
Just Out: Data Center Design Case Studies
After months of being on a back burner, my first self-publishing book is out: Data Center Design Case Studies are available on my web site (Amazon Kindle version coming whenever I find time to figure out all the details).
Subscribers can download the book immediately (you’ll find it in the new Books section), as can anyone who bought the Designing Private Cloud Infrastructure webinar (you’ll find it in the webinar materials), and you can buy a copy on my web site.