Since the dawn of time people have skirted best practice and banged together networks, putting the proverbial square peg in the esoteric round hole. For example, new vendor XYZ’s solution has brought in new requirements for deployment. While it may seem easier for to throw together a new firewall, a switch, and maybe some additional […]
Cisco Nexus 2000: A Love/Hate Relationship
My feelings towards the Nexus 2000 Fabric Extender (FEX) are hardly a secret. The myriad of design choices and platform limitations present engineers with some rather difficult decisions. Because of this, I’ve seen a handful of engineers reverse course on their current design due to limitations. It’s because of this that I have harsh feelings […]
BGP Essentials – The Art of Path Manipulation
Most enterprise networks use BGP to peer with their Internet Service Providers if they want to be multi-homed. Many factors come into play when determining how traffic should flow, but no matter what policies are put into place, at some point in time you’re going to need some control over how your external traffic is […]
Using /31 subnets for point-to-point interfaces
Recently a “colleague”, I use that term very loosely here, was reviewing my recommendations for changes on his network. Since they’re rather tight on public IP space, and require it for a few of their PTP links, I had suggested changing them to /31 subnets. His response was less than accepting of the changes as […]
