NEC is currently the only Vendor that is shipping an OpenFlow enabled product today. So naturally, their presentation led off with a message about what they’re bringing to the market. If you don’t know anything about OpenFlow, please read my previous post covering the OpenFlow Symposium.
Currently, NEC is shipping their OpenFlow implementation as ProgrammableFlow products which include a ProgrammableFlow Controller (PFC), and a ProgrammableFlow enabled switches. Unfortunately, I’m unable to find any documentation on these products as NEC’s actual website was written by someone who enjoys a difficult maze… (the only page I could find on ProgrammableFlow was here) But I digress. The PFC it’s self is just a Linux box with some custom software implementing the OpenFlow 1.0 standard. In addition to acting as part of your control plane, it can also do topology discovery via LLDP, and perform fault detection and possibly even repair. The graphical representation NEC gives you of your network with their controller software is rather nice, it’s not just a visualization of your netowrk, but it also provides end to end monitoring of each individual flow transported over the network. As for NEC’s ProgrammableFlow switch, it is a 48-port GigE switch with 4x 10Gb SFP+ uplink ports providing line rate multi-layer switching, and maintaining up to 160k OpenFlow “flows”. The switch itself can operate as a hybrid either allow you to control it via an OpenFlow controller, or operate as a traditional managed switch. NEC has also developed a vSwitch for Windows 8′s Hyper-V, this alone should prove to be rather interesting as NEC will hit the ground running on virtual switching with the new release of Windows Server 8. [ read more... ]
During the coarse of NFD2 I found an iPhone app called Halftone, and later, one named ComicStrip that allow you to add some fun effects and speech bubbles to your photos… So, I started in on some of the photos that I took during the trip. After putting a few of them on twitter they got some pretty good responses. Earlier today, I asked a couple people if I should put them all up on my blog as a collection, so here it is, all of the images I have created thus far. Some of them may not make much sense unless you were there, but I hope they’re humorous nonetheless. If you have any questions feel free to ask and I’ll try to explain…
First of all, I want to say thank you to everyone from Cisco Systems for inviting us into the CCIC (Cisco Cloud Innovation Center), this was an amazing room to hold our discussions. We started off with a greeting from Omar Sultan who then brought our old friend Ron Fuller. Ron gave us a quick overview of Cisco’s Nexus lineup, and some of their current sales figures. Did you know they currently have 18,000 Nexus 7000s in the wild, and over 3,000,000 10GB ports? That alone is pretty amazing to me. During this time he gave us a run down of the F2, and Fab2 series cards for the Nexus 7000, which can provide 550Gbps per slot, 17.6Tbps per chassis, essentially doubling the bandwidth available in the series. He also made mention of the new M1L series cards which have increased memory, and the Nexus 2248tpe whose large buffers (32Mb) are optimized for large data and video. He also made mention of a Nexus feature called PONG, which does L2 traceroute. I’m curious how this differs from the MAC traceroute in the 6500 series. There was also mention of the new Nexus B22 for the HP C-class enclosure. Ron has also let slip that the Nexus line is actually powered by Awesomesauce, a grave error IMHO, as any company could now reverse engineer this sauce and begin to make their own…
Next Cisco brought up two representatives from some of Cisco’s recent acquisitions. Both of them, unsurprisingly, related to IaaS/Cloud based services, Linesider and NewScale. First up, was defining the problem that their solution solves. This was the first of many times we would go through this CIO pitch of “The Problem”. In many fewer words, this problem has been defined as the desire to provide automated provisioning of cloud services. After this was clear, we got back to the good stuff. They showed us a demo of the Cisco IT Elastic Infrastructure Services (CITEIS) software, which was rather impressive. [ read more... ]
Well, here is the update that I promised you. I’ve spent the last few days with some of the top minds in Networking industry. One of the most exciting technologies being presented was OpenFlow which allows for a concept referred to as Software Defined Networking (SND). No matter who you are, or who you work for, this should be something interesting for you. OpenFlow could have real benefits from the Enterprise all the way up to large Service Providers networks, just imagine being able to move flows of traffic around on your network without disturbing other traffic headed to the same destination? Seriously, we will finally be able to control networks the same way people (users) think we’re able to now. But I’m seriously getting ahead of myself…
This post is already going to be long enough without me providing every last detail on what’s going on with OpenFlow development, so I’ve kept my comments to a bare minimum. Below I’ve included the days events in chronological order, (at least to the best of my memory) although Ivan has suggested watching them in a specific order. I’ve included PDFs of their slide decks where I can, but not everyone provided them. The day started off with an opening presentation from Stephen Foskett and Greg Ferro.
OpenFlow is a proposed standard for exchanging flow data between controllers and networking devices. OpenFlow has the potential to move our networking control plane into the world of Software Defined Networking. But what does that mean for you?
The biggest advantage to having a SDN/OpenFlow enabled network is that you’re able to add plugins to your control plane from multiple vendors. Since it is an open standard, anyone can write modules to add control features for your network, allowing you the flexibility to use any of those to enhance your network.
Panelists
Tech Field Day has done a great job bringing the top minds together, the line up looks something like this.
Guido Appenzeller Kyle Foster (Big Switch)
Curt Beckmann (Brocade)
David Meyer (Cisco)
Ed Crabbe (Google)
David Ward (Juniper)
Don Clark (NEC)
Samrat Ganguily (NEC)
Igor Gashinksy (Yahoo)
Watch the Stream
Followup
After the event, I hope to have some more interesting tidbits to update here as I will be taking some notes on the more interesting bits being discussed. But for now, be sure to check out the Packet Pusher’s blog for some great links and information on OpenFlow. Be on the lookout for an updated post hopefully later today.
As I feel this may be a regular section of the blog due to my lack of availability. Please suggest a better name for this “series”. I would certainly appreciate it, as would my readers who have heard enough of my bad humor…
SSL as we know it has been compromised!
The other Tony, as in Tony Bourke has brought to my attention the recently BEAST exploit that compromises TLS1.0 aka, SSL as you know it. This has been fixed in TLS 1.1 and 1.2, but as it seems, there is very little support out there for anything but TLS 1.0 thanks to the OpenSSL project.
TLS 1.2 and NLB
This is a follow up in a way to the article above, Tony talks about solving the TLS issue using NLBs.
IT Panic Mode
Tom bring up some very good points discussing how engineers deal with stress during outages. And he throws out a great Ghostbusters quote!
Nexus BFD
Interesting article discussing some oddities in the way the Nexus handles BFD processing.
The Reason Enterprises aren’t deploying IPv6
Ethan brings up some great points here discussing why Enterprise enviorments haven’t deployed IPv6, or in many cases, haven’t even considered it.
IPexpert IOU Topology
@jdsilva has built a great IOU Netmap for use with IPexpert’s CCIE R&S labs.
The Last Cable Tool…
Tom has found an interesting tool put out by Gerber. I’d like to see one of these in the store so I could get a feel for it before throwing down some hardcore cash…
MPLS is not Tunneling!
Yet another great post by Ivan, discussing the differences between MPLS virtual circuits and a true tunnel.
Is RIM using Cisco Nexus?
This weeks RIM failure was apparently caused by a core switch failure within their infrastructure. They stated that, “Although the system is designed to failover to a back-up switch, the failover did not function as previously tested.” — This makes me wonder if they’ve experienced some of the same fail over issues as we have with the Nexus line. As these have been fixed in later revisions of code, I would certainly hope this wasn’t the case.
Have you heard the news? You’re least favorite blogger is making the trip to San Jose California for Tech Field Day: Network Field Day 2 — I really want to add a dramatic movie headline to the end of that like… The Reckoning. But I digress. First, I want to say that I’m completely humbled to be selected to attend this years Networking Field Day. As our favorite public access TV hosts Wayne and Garth would say as they bow before the feet of Alice Cooper, “We’re not worthy! We’re not worthy! We’re not worthy! We’re scum, We suck!” — I can use the royal “we”, right? But seriously, to be included in a list with Ivan “Mr. MPLS” Pepelnjak, Greg “Packet Pushers” Ferro, Brandon “AAA” Carroll, Tom “My liver hurts” Hollingsworth, Jeff “Mr. Nexus 7009″ Fry, and Jeremey “IOU” Gaddis is certainly a great honor.
So what is Tech Field Day?
Tech Field Day is a logical expansion of Gestalt IT’s founding principal of “The whole is greater than the sum of the parts”. The brain child of Stephen Foskett now in its third year, brings together innovative IT vendors and the leaders of the IT world in a forum focused on education and feedback. Network Field Day is the networking focused offshoot of this project now in it’s second year. For more information visit the Networking Field Day 2 site.
Tech Field Day Disclaimer
Tech Field Day is made possible by the sponsors who are footing the bill for the travel and living expenses of delegates such as myself. Sponsors should understand that their financing of Tech Field Day in no way guarantees them any bias from the delegates and that they are only there to provide their honest and direct opinions of the solutions they present.
Ever get locked out of a router or switch that is many hours or even days away? Recently, I had the pleasure, again. For some reason, be it the consultant that was turning up our MLPPP session on site, the engineer who was working with the consultant, or a random case of configuration corruption…. a VTY access-class statement got changed to a non-existent ACL. But, at first, I didn’t know this. I didn’t know anything. I assumed the remote office was up, due to the lack of complaints, and the fact that I could get to the server and switch behind the router, but other than that, I had no clue. [ read more... ]
Well, here is the update that I promised you. I’ve spent the last few days with some of the top minds in Networking industry. One of the most exciting technologies being presented was OpenFlow which allows for a concept referred to as Software Defined Networking (SND). No matter who you are, or who you work for, this should be something interesting for you. OpenFlow could have real benefits from the Enterprise all the way up to large Service Providers networks, just imagine being able to move flows of traffic around on your network without disturbing other traffic headed to the same destination? Seriously, we will finally be able to control networks the same way people (users) think we’re able to now. But I’m seriously getting ahead of myself…
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