Category: SDN

You probably know my opinion on nerd knobs and the resulting complexity, but sometimes you desperately need something to get the job done.

In traditional vendor-driven networking world, you might be able to persuade your vendor to implement the knob (you think) you need in 3 years by making it a mandatory requirement for a $10M purchase order. In open-source world you implement the knob, write the unit tests, and submit a pull request.

One of my readers asked me a question that came up in his business strategy class:

Why did routers and switches end up being vertically integrated (the same person makes the hardware and the software)? Why didn't they go down the same horizontal path as compute (with Intel making chips, OEMs making systems and Microsoft providing the OS)? Why did this resemble the pre-Intel model of IBM, DEC, Sun…?

Simple answer: because nobody was interested in disaggregating them.

I was listening to a very interesting Future of Networking with Fred Baker a long while ago and enjoyed Fred’s perspectives and historical insight until Greg Ferro couldn’t possibly resist the usual bashing of traditional routing protocols and praising of intent-based (or flow-based or SDN or…) whatever.

Here’s what I understood he said around 35:17

After introducing PowerNSX Anthony Burke illustrated how easy it is to use with a Hello, World equivalent: creating a logical switch (VXLAN segment).

You’ll need at least free ipSpace.net subscription to watch the video.

Want to know more about VMware NSX? We’ll run an NSX-focused event and a NSX Deep Dive workshop in Zurich on April 19th 2018, an overview webinar comparing NSX, ACI and EVPN on March 1st, and a deep dive in VMware NSX architecture later in 2018.

One of my readers sent me this question:

I'm in the process of researching SD-WAN solutions and have hit upon what I believe is a consistent deficiency across most of the current SD-WAN/SDx offerings. The standard "best practice" seems to be 60/180 BGP timers between the SD-WAN hub and the network core or WAN edge.

Needless to say, he wasn’t able to find BFD in these products either.

Does that matter? My reader thinks it does:

It’s interesting how the same pundits who loudly complain about the complexities of BGP (and how it will be dead any time soon and replaced by an SDN miracle) also praise the beauties of intent-based networking… without realizing that the hated BGP route selection process represents one of the first failures of intent-based approach to networking.

Let’s start with some definitions. There are two ways to get a job done by someone else:

With all the intent-based hype (and the previous SDN-will-rule-the-world-hype) you’d think that the network is the ultimate ossified roadblock on the path to agile nirvana.

You’d be totally wrong (and you’d deserve it – never trust a vendor peddling a product).

Here’s an amazing discovery I made when I was still running on-site SDN and network automation workshops.

A while ago I got a kind email from Kireeti Kompella, CTO @ Juniper Networks, saying “A colleague sent me an email of yours regarding SDN, the trough of disillusionment, and the rise of automation. Here's a more dramatic view: the Self-Driving Network -- one whose operation is totally automated.”

Even though Software Gone Wild podcast focuses on practical ideas that you could deploy relatively soon in your network, we decided to make an exception and talk about (as one of my friends described it) a unicorn driving a flying DeLorean with a flux capacitor.

It all started with a realistic response I got to my automation and orchestration blog post (here’s a unicorn-driving-a-DeLorean one in case you missed it):

Maybe you could also add the “intent-based network” which is also not so far from orchestration?

It got me thinking. The way I understand intent-based whatever, it’s an approach where I tell a system what I want it to do, not how to do it.

Eyvonne Sharp wrote an interesting blog post describing the challenges Cisco might have integrating Viptela acquisition, particularly the fact that Viptela has a software solution running on low-cost hardware.

Guess what… Cisco IOS also runs on low-cost hardware, it’s just that Cisco routers are sold as a software+hardware bundle masquerading as expensive hardware.

Got this remark from one of my SDN mailing list subscribers:

There are NMSs that are based on SNMP, their manufacturers that say they can replace an SDN architecture, because they allow to automate the management of the network.

O’RLY?

Monitoring SDN Networks is the featured webinar of June 2017, and in the featured video Terry Slattery (CCIE#1026) talks about network analysis of SDN.

If you’re a trial subscriber, log into my.ipspace.net, select the webinar from the first page, and watch the video marked with star… and if you’d like to try the ipSpace.net subscription register here.

Trial subscribers can also use this month's featured webinar discount to get a 25% discount (and get closer to the full subscription).

Imagine a service provider that allows you to provision 100GE point-to-point circuit between any two of their POPs through a web site and delivers in seconds (assuming you’ve already solved the physical connectivity problem). That’s the whole idea of SDN, right? Only not so many providers got there yet.

A while ago I sent out an email to my SDN and network automation mailing list (join here) asking whether anyone uses Open Daylight in anything close to a production environment (because I haven’t ever seen one).

Among many responses saying “not here” I got a polite email from VP of Marketing working for a company that sells OpenDaylight-related services listing tons of customer deployments (no surprise there).

Jordan Martin published a nice summary of what I’ve been preaching for years: centralized control plane doesn’t work (well) while controller-based network orchestration makes perfect sense.

While I totally agree with what he wrote he got the hype angle wrong: