Category: workshop
IPv6 in the campus but not in the Data Center?
Cisco has recently published two excellent design guides: Deploying IPv6 in Campus Networks and Deploying IPv6 in Branch Networks. As expected from the engineers writing Cisco’s design documents, these guides contain tons of useful information and good recommendations; they’re a highly recommended reading if you’ve started considering IPv6 deployment in your enterprise network. These design guides are part of Design Zone for Branch and Design Zone for Campus.
IPv6 deployment issues are just one of the topics covered in the Enterprise IPv6 Deployment workshop. You can attend an online version of the workshop or we can organize a dedicated event for your team.
Detect short bursts with EEM
Last week I’ve described how you can use EEM to detect long-term interface congestion which could indicate denial-of-service attack. The mechanism I’ve used (the averaged interface load) is pretty slow; using the lowest possible value for the load-interval (30 seconds) it takes almost a minute to detect a DOS attack (see below).
If you want to detect outbound bursts, you can do better: you can monitor the increase in the number of output drops over a short period of time.
IPv6 in the Data Center: is Cisco ready?
With the recent Cisco’s push into the Data Center environment and all the (not so very unreasonable) fuss around IPv4 address depletion and imminent need for IPv6, I wanted to check whether an all-Cisco shop could do the first step: deploy IPv6 on Internet-facing production servers. If you follow the various design guidelines, your setup will have at least the following elements (and I bet someone from Cisco has already told you that you also need XML firewall, Ironport and WAAS appliance):
Now let’s see how well these boxes support IPv6.
I’m describing the Data Center IPv6 deployment issues in the Enterprise IPv6 Deployment workshop. The diagram above was taken straight from the workshop materials.
IPv6-capable or IPv6-ready: is it enough?
During the IPv6 summit in Slovenia I’ve participated in a roundtable organized by our Ministry of Higher Education, Science and Technology. One of my points was that the government should require true IPv6 support in all its IT procurement processes to promote IPv6 adoption (I have to admit I’ve borrowed a few ideas from Geoff Huston’s “Is the Transition to IPv6 a Market Failure?” article) … and one of the participants (coming from the Service Provider industry) answered that “that’s common hygiene”. I’m not so sure.
Topics like this are covered in my Enterprise IPv6 Deployment workshop. Learn more about my workshops from my web site.
Deploying IPv6 in Enterprise Networks
I was invited to present my views on the IPv6 deployment in enterprise networks during the local IPv6 summit. Instead of joining the cheering few or the dubious crowds, I’m trying to present a realistic view answering questions like “what do I have to do”, “when should I start” and “where should I focus my efforts”.
Here’s the outline of my presentation, any feedback, additional thoughts or insightful critique is most welcome.