Heavy Networking

Welcome to the Packet Pushers Weekly Show. We’re going back to our roots with a community roundtable discussion.

In this format, a group of network engineers chew the fat about what’s on their minds related to IT, projects being worked on, the latest sputterings from vendors, and so on.

Put in your very favorite earbuds and join us for a frank chat about what’s up.

We’ll opine on handling hurricanes with a lack of carrier diversity, refresh cycles for 100GbE, cheap access to Safari Books Online, the all-wireless office, phone home failures, and more.

Our guests are

* Jordan Martin

* Tom Hollingsworth

* Jeremy Filliben

* Josh O’Brien

* Dana Dawson

Sponsor: Cumulus Networks

Data center networks need to be faster, more efficient and more agile than ever — and traditional networks just can’t keep up. With disaggregation, a Linux operating system, and automation, Cumulus Networks brings speed, efficiency, agility and cost savings to business of all sizes. Find out how to make the transition to 100G by downloading a free whitepaper at cumulusnetworks.com/100gpod.

Packet Pushers Virtual Design Clinic 2

Regiseter now for the Packet Pushers’ second Virtual Design Clinic on October 11. This live, online event includes deep-dive technical presentations  and Ask Me Anything sessions with expert panelists.  Go to packetpushers.net/vdc to register for free. And get videos from the first VDC when you join our membership site Ignition.

Show Links:

The Year of 100GbE in Data Center Networks – Data Center Knowledge

For a while there, it seemed like Ethernet fabrics were all we could talk about on Packet Pushers. Then SDN was all the rage, and the arguments about TRILL vs. Shortest Path Bridging (SPB) went mostly silent.

Now that SDN is in the “no, but really” part of the hype cycle, we can turn our attention back to cool technologies like Ethernet fabrics and see what’s happening.

Our sponsor today is Extreme Networks. They’ve sent us technical heavyweight Paul Unbehagen and a customer, Dan Smith. We’re going to check in on an installation of Extreme’s Fabric Connect with Paul and Dan.

We get an update on what’s new with SPB. We also discuss Fabric Connect, an Extreme technology (via its Avaya acquisition) that is based on SPB and implements a fabric that can run across your entire network.

Then we drill into Dan’s real-world Fabric Connect deployment in a complex environment (multiple sites and more than a million client devices connected) to learn how it works, how it affects day to day operations, and use cases that have emerged.

Paul Unbehagen is Senior Director Product and Strategy at Extreme, and a voting member of the IEEE and co-author of the SPB protocol. Dan Smith is a Technical Engineering Specialist for a large U.S. healthcare organization.

Show Links:

Smart Guide to Automating Campus Networks – Extreme Networks

Defender for IoT – Extreme Networks

More enterprises are moving application to or developing applications in the cloud, whether on premises or in public clouds such as AWS, Azure, and Google.

One problem is that each cloud has its own approach to networking, so trying to build a consistent networking strategy across multiple clouds becomes very difficult.

Today’s sponsor, Avi Networks, offers a next-generation ADC, load balancer, and Web application firewall, entirely delivered in software, that can run in a multi-cloud environment.

The software has two key components: a controller for global configuration and management, and service engines that are deployed in private and public cloud instances. Avi Networks can work across clouds while being managed from a central console.

On today’s show we talk about why enterprises are adopting a multi-cloud strategy, and how Avi Networks can help customers ensure application delivery, provide security, and enable automation at scale across multiple cloud environments.

Our guest is Steve Allie, Director of Systems Engineering for North America at Avi Networks.

Show Links:

Avi Networks

Multi-Cloud Load Balancing: Separating Fact from Fiction – Avi Networks Blog

Today’s show is just Ethan, Greg and Drew having a chat.

We spend a little time discussing some behind-the-scenes Website activities, including migrating to a new hosting platform, making the transition to SSL, and rolling out Ignition.

We also preview some upcoming content on Ignition, and welcome the IPv6 Buzz podcast to its official channel.

The Packet Pushers crew went onsite at VMworld so we share what we were up to, including experimenting with video and attending VMware’s Future:Net sessions. We also riff on service meshes as the next holy grail in IT.

Last but not least, we talk about our struggles to stay physically and mentally healthy.

Software defined WAN is a more complicated conversation than optimized routing over multiple circuit types.

Modern SD-WAN solutions bring in security, high availability, multi-tenancy, and deep application recognition. They even integrate with other tech in addition to the fancy routing.

In today’s sponsored episode, Juniper Networks joins us to talk about its Contrail SD-WAN product.

We discuss Contrail SD-WAN and how it differs from other vendors’ approaches, how SD-WAN use cases have evolved.

We also dive into three key pillars of Contrail SD-WAN: routing, VPNs, and security.

Our guest is Tony Sarathchandra, Director, Product Management – Software Defined Networking Technology and Solutions at Juniper Networks.

Show Links:

SD-WAN – Juniper Networks

 

In this episode we talk a second time to network architect Andrey Khomyakov, who’s helped his organization make the transition from traditional to open networking in production.

Our first chat with Andrey was in Weekly Show 399. The way it worked out, that ended up being a mostly hardware conversation, which made some of you very grumpy, and you aimed packets at us with the evil bit set.

Today, we want to drill into the management and operations side of things and complete our open networking in production conversation. If you’re still grumpy after this episode, maybe it’s time to start your own podcast.

We discuss the network stack and the infrastructure environment Andrey works within, look at ongoing operational issues, examine how Andrey and his team use automation, and look at the staffing and training impacts of open networking.

Sponsor: InterOptic

InterOptic offers high-performance, high-quality optics to help you scale to meet your bandwidth demands. Stop paying OEM prices for optics and start talking to the optics experts who deliver brand equivalent transceivers at a fraction of the price.

Sponsor: Cumulus Networks

Cumulus Networks presents Networking with S.O.U.L – Simple, Open, Untethered Linux. These 4 tenants enable modern, agile networks be built to support the new demands of the business. Save an average of 45% on CapEx and approximately 74% on OpenEx by adopting these SOULful networking solutions. Learn how to leverage the top 5 automation tips and tricks in your network — head to http://cumulusnetworks.com/ppautomation to download our automation white paper.

Show Links:

Show 399: Open Networking In Production – Packet Pushers

Show 351 Design & Build 13: Network Orchestration with Salt – Packet Pushers

Athena Health Job Opening

When migrating to an SD-WAN, do you still need a branch router? What does a branch router do? Circuit termination. Routing. QoS. Tunneling. Filtering or even firewalling. Virtual networks. Maybe a few other functions, depending on what you stacked on the box.

Can an SD-WAN appliance do all of those things? In the early days, the answer was…probably not all of them, and so you’d often keep your branch router inline with the SD-WAN device.

What about today? Do you still need to keep that branch router around, consuming power and running up your maintenance costs? Or can a modern SD-WAN forwarding device be a full replacement for a branch router?

Derek Granath, VP of Product Marketing; and Rolf Muralt, VP Product Management for SD-WAN at Silver Peak, join us for today’s sponsored discussion about branch router architecture.

We examine the business drivers for eliminating branch routers, discuss potential tradeoffs that come with swapping out the router for an SD-WAN appliance, look at architecture and design implications and caveats, and explore the process of going live without the router.

Show Links:

For more information on Router Replacement visit silver-peak.com/think-outside-router, where you can Download the Top 10 Reasons to Replace Your Branch Router with SD-WAN eBook or the Architecting an Application-Driven WAN Edge – Solution Brief.

How to Architect an Application-driven WAN Edge – Silver Peak White Paper

Silver Peak on Twitter

Silver Peak on LinkedIn

Silver Peak on Facebook

We’ve talked about network automation plenty on Packet Pushers. Many of those conversations have been about little things, like writing a script to do a specific task. But is that really network automation?

Our guest today is Ken Celenza, and he’s here to argue that scripting repeatable tasks is just the beginning of the automation journey. Ken, who is Director of Automation at NetworkToCode, works with customers to build and integrate with automation frameworks that address the entirety of their network automation needs.

Ken and the Packet Pushers have a wide-ranging conversation about automation, including automation principles, data models and schemas, testing code, and more.

While much of today’s discussion revolves around open source software, this is simply a means to convey a message, and by no means not prescribing any specific solution as the best way forward. If a commercial product fits your needs and your budget, go for it.

Sponsor: ThousandEyes

ThousandEyes gives you performance visibility from every user to every app over any network, both internal and external, so you can smoothly migrate to the cloud, transform your WAN, troubleshoot faster and deliver exceptional user experiences. Sign up for a free account at thousandeyes.com/packetpushers and choose a free ThousandEyes t-shirt.

Sponsor: Cumulus Networks

Cumulus Networks presents Networking with S.O.U.L – Simple, Open, Untethered Linux. These 4 tenants enable modern, agile networks be built to support the new demands of the business. Save an average of 45% on CapEx and approximately 74% on OpenEx by adopting these SOULful networking solutions. Learn how to leverage the top 5 automation tips and tricks in your network — head to http://cumulusnetworks.com/ppautomation to download our automation white paper.

Show Links:

Source of Truth – Himawan Nugroho

Device Configurations Are Not A Good Source Of Truth – IP Space

Data Models – IP Space

Continuous Testing For Networks – Matt Oswalt on Packet Pushers Ignition

Model-driven Programmability: The Rise of Network Automation – Cisco Blogs

OpenConfig: Standardized Models For Networking – Packet Pushers

Using Vendor & Platform Neutral Data Models with Ansible – GitHub

NetworkToCode – Slack

Ken Celenza on Twitter

Ken on LinkedIn

Ken on GitHub

Today's Weekly Show podcast explores what's new in Free Range Routing (FRR), the open source routing stack. Our guest is Donald Sharp.

The Packet Pushers explore open and open-source networking and their potential impact on network operations and design in the latest installment of the Future Of Networking series. Our guest is Arpit Joshipura of the Linux Foundation.