Tech Bytes

In this briefing delivered at Tech Field Day’s NFD16 event, Kemp Technologies discussed their SaaS-based Kemp 360 Vision product, aimed at helping enterprises understand their application delivery fabric. Kemp stressed that they aren’t trying to become an APM vendor. Rather, Kemp 360 Vision is focused specifically on proactive monitoring infrastructure related to application delivery.

Ethan Banks reviews the main points of the briefing in the audio above. Watch the video below for the complete briefing with more detail.

You know Gigamon, the visibility fabric folks. They take copies of your network traffic and send it to tools for analysis. But what else can Gigamon do? Ethan Banks summarizes a briefing he received at Networking Field Day 16, where Gigamon describes sending rich metadata feeds from GigaSECURE as IPFIX records to Splunk. Then the metadata can be mined for security insights using an app written for Splunk by Gigamon.

To listen to Ethan’s summary of the briefing, stream using the player above. To watch the video recording of the entire briefing, watch the embedded YouTube below.

In this audio brief, Ethan Banks highlights interesting points from a presentation on 400G by Arista Founder, Chief Development Officer, and Chairman Andy Bechtolsheim. Andy discusses the 400G Ethernet future, explaining in detail the challenges of speeds at 100G and beyond, covering power consumption, heat exhaustion, the physical limitations of Ethernet lanes, and optical module form factors. Listen to Ethan’s analysis via the embedded player above.

For Andy’s complete presentation that includes technical diagrams and specifications related to adoption rate projections, optics form factors, and 100G Ethernet lanes, as well as 400G and 800G, view the embedded video below, courtesy of TechFieldDay.com.

Velocloud is an SD-WAN company that has focussed on software-only solution. SD-WAN products tend to split into different types – router replacements like Viptela/Cisco where the SD-WAN functions are device centred. Velocloud has built a network of POPs around the world and traffic is routed to those POPs. The POPs then backhaul the traffic over the Internet

* As a software-centred product, it fits into NSX software-only networking.

* I think that microsegmentation has been a big deal for  VMware NSX. The current fashion for improving IT security in the network is somewhat laughable as a big picture but the reality is that insecure apps are what enterprises run right now.

* I can imagine that Dell will be quick to setup a partnership to provide hardware for customers than want it.

* As the leading WAN company and rocking several billion dollars in the Enterprise router market, Cisco can’t be pleased nor can it be surprised.

* Also important, VMware has struggled to enter the telco/carrier market. NFV is NSX core competency but carriers are looking t open source solutions to stay in control of their futures and budgets.

* Velocloud  has been successful in forming partnerships with more than 50 SPs.

* The relatively limited success of Cisco ACI with less than half of the SDN DC market,  shows that VMware can build a business in the face of competition from a tough competitor. Its likely it can do that again.

Fibermountain has released the AllPath® Connect L-Series. Its a little difficult to explain what Fibermountain does, its not something you encounter every day.   This is a software-controlled Layer 1 switch with 5 nanosecond port-to-port latency.

You can path cables directly using a controller / GUI / CLI and universal physical tap solution that you can program as you need. You can use it as a dynamic tap to add, and remove your capture interfaces as you need. Or you might want to automate patching in a lab or a breakout room.

The new L-series supports MPO in a 1RU formation but you can break out or aggregate 24-fiber MPO, 12-fiber MPO or 8-fiber MPO interfaces to LC or MPO connectivity.

Link: L-Series Premium Fiber Patch Panels – https://www.fibermountain.com/index.php/products/sdn-intelligent-cabling/l-series

 

Tempered Networks has released the HIPswitch 250, an industrial IoT gateway that’s designed to protect IoT devices, enforce white list-based policies on which systems the devices can communicate with, and send IoT data via an encrypted tunnel over standard Ethernet or IP networks.

The switch, which has to be deployed in conjunction with Tempered’s Orchestrator and HIPrelay gear, is an 8-port, ruggedized device that includes dual cellular modems.

For more information, check out temperednetworks.com.

Links:

Host Identity Protocol Architecture – IETF

Tempered Networks Uses Device Identity Fabric For Secure Connectivity – Packet Pushers

Gartner Says 8.4 Billion Connected “Things” Will Be In Use In 2017, Up 31 Percent From 2016 – Gartner

Pluribus Networks presented at Networking Field Day 16, a TechFieldDay.com event. Pluribus covered a lot of ground about their switching platform, capable of building a data center or campus fabric on whitebox switches.

However, Pluribus is about more than just switching. Ethan Banks was a delegate at #NFD16, and discusses Pluribus’ presentation of their Insight Analytics Platform. Insight Analytics is a network traffic analysis tool that, when paired with a Pluribus network fabric, can analyze every packet on the network on every port at line rate. Press play in the player at the top of this article for Ethan’s report.

For the entire Pluribus presentation recorded on September 14, 2017 from #NFD16, watch the video below.

I recently caught up with Cumulus Networks to find out how its Cumulus Express program is going. Cumulus Express sells white box switches that are pre-bundled with Cumulus Linux, the company’s network OS.

The Express program is a bit of a departure from Cumulus’s original go-to-market strategy, which was based around disaggregating the switch software and hardware. Cumulus still offers its software as a stand-alone package, but the Express program is designed to help customers get rolling with Cumulus more quickly.

I spoke with Cumulus CEO Josh Leslie to get an update on the Express program, what the company has learned, and how it affects its relationship with other technology partners.

You can get more information about Cumulus here. If you’re interested in network OSs, we have a page in our Virtual Toolbox with tons of information.

I’m Ethan Banks, it’s the 23rd of October 2017, and here’s what’s happening. I had a briefing with Kentik at Networking Field Day 16 back in early September. Kentik is a company providing deep analytics of network traffic and are also a Packet Pushers sponsor.

Kentik briefed the Tech Field Day delegation for about 2 hours. In this episode, I focus on specific Kentik features they discussed around network peering and planning.

To view this briefing in its entirety, watch the YouTube video here.

Barefoot Networks, the startup building the programmable Tofino switch chip, recently announced the release of P4 Runtime, an open source project developed in conjunction with Google to enable a controller to communicate with switches running programmable silicon.

In addition to announcing the availability of P4 Runtime, Barefoot and Google also tested the software using the open-source ONOS controller.

For more information, check out Barefoot Networks and P4.org.