The Everything Feed - All Packet Pushers Pods

Free Range Routing (FRR) is open-source routing software that’s been forked from the Quagga open-source project. Designed to run on Linux and Unix systems in a variety of production environments, FRR supports common routing protocols including BGP, IS-IS, LDP, OSPF, PIM, and RIP.

In this Priority Queue we look at the FRR project and its capabilities. We also provide some background on Quagga, why Quagga was forked and the companies behind it, and what people can expect from Free Range Routing going forward.

Our guests are Russ White, a network architect at LinkedIn; Martin Winter, a Quagga tester and co-founder of NetDEF, the Network Device Education Foundation; and Donald Sharp, a member of the technical staff at Cumulus Networks who focuses on routing.

You can learn more about Free Range Routing at its website, and get information on Quagga here.

This podcast was recorded on site at the IETF 98 conference in Chicago. Thanks to Huawei, which covered travel and accomodations to enable the Packet Pushers to attend and record some shows.

Automation is the key to speed and scale, but networking has been slower to adopt automation tools and processes than other IT disciplines. Today’s Datanauts episode explores the current state of network automation to try to understand the challenges and limitations in networking, and how the industry is shifting.

Our guest is Ryan Booth, a senior data center engineer at a large financial services company. He blogs at Moving Ones & Zeros.

Ryan and the Datanauts talk about why the majority of networking equipment is still managed by the CLI; the emerging sets of tools, APIs, data models, and community projects that are emerging for network automation, and how network engineers can tackle configuration management and code management.

Sponsor: Interop ITX

Interop ITX, May 15 – 19 in Las Vegas, is the only independent conference for technology leaders. Get a year’s worth of objective IT education in one week. And don’t miss the Packet Pushers’ Future Of Networking Summit at Interop. Visit interopitx.com and use promo code PacketPushers for a 20% discount.

Sponsor: Incapsula

Incapsula is a cloud-based service from Imperva that protects and accelerates your Web sites with services including DDoS and bot protection, traffic inspection, load balancing, and CDN. Incapsula protects over 4 million Web properties, from individual bloggers to the Fortune 50. Datanauts listeners can try Incapsula free! Just go to incapsula.com/packetpushers.

Show Links:

Network To Code

Moving Ones & Zeros

Current Trends in DC Networking – Ansible Basics

Today’s Priority Queue drills into the YANG data modeling language and telemetry. Our guest is Benoit Claise, a distinguished engineer at Cisco and an IETF director for operations and management.

We talk with Benoit about just what YANG modeling is (and what it isn’t), why we’re hearing more about YANG in the networking industry lately, and why YANG and NETCONF are often mentioned in the same breath. We also talk about how YANG relates to network monitoring, and how it can be used to gather telemetry.

If you’ve wanted to get up to speed on YANG, this is a good place to start.

This podcast was recorded on site at the IETF 98 conference in Chicago. Thanks to Huawei, which covered travel and accomodations to enable the Packet Pushers to attend and record some shows.

Today’s Datanauts episode peers under the covers of the vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA). Our guest is Emad Younis, Sr. Technical Marketing Engineer at VMware. He blogs regularly about VCSA including feature updates, bug fixes, and more.

We’ll talk about what’s new in the VCSA 6.5 release, examine the pros and cons of VCSA vs. a traditional deployment, and discuss the carrots and the sticks that VMware is using to encourage migration away from Windows-based vCenter servers.

Sponsor: Interop ITX

Interop ITX, May 15 – 19 in Las Vegas, is the only independent conference for technology leaders. Get a year’s worth of objective IT education in one week. And don’t miss the Packet Pushers’ Future Of Networking Summit at Interop. Visit interopitx.com and use promo code PacketPushers for a 20% discount.

Show Links:

vSphere Blog

VMware Product Walkthroughs

vSphere Youtube 6.5 Playlist

EmadYounis.com

A Look at VMware’s vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) 6.5 Release – Wahl Network

For many years, the CCIE has been the gold standard of certifications among network engineers. Recently, there has been a backlash against the cert by some, as Cisco has taken heat for increased pricing, an excessively difficult routing & switching written qualification exam, and a tendency towards a Cisco-centric way of looking at networking.

The question we raise today: Is the CCIE fading in value?

Our guests are Dustin Beare, a CCIE candidate who has been studying more than 20 hours a week for the certification; and Eman Conde, who has been recruiting CCIE talent since 1995.

We talk about engineers’ motivations for acquiring the certification, the industry’s demand for it, content changes, and new skillsets engineers might want to acquire.

Show Links:

Network Introvert – Dustin Beare’s blog

CCIE Flyer – Eman Conde’s blog

Today on the Datanauts it’s object storage. Object storage is easily accessible, highly scalable, and underpins many cloud and online applications and services. Our guest sailor across the sea of object storage is Enrico Signoretti, head of product strategy at OpenIO and a well-known analyst and blogger at Juku.

Enrico and the Datanauts will talk about the object storage format, how it differs from block and file storage, how it scales in performance and capacity, and use cases where it does (and doesn’t) make sense.

We’ll also talk about OpenIO, an open source project that develops software-defined storage (SDS). OpenIO also offers a commercially supported version of its SDS software.

Last but not least, we discuss Enrico’s work in the technology community, including blogging, open source, and his past work with the TECHUnplugged organization.

Sponsor: Interop ITX

Interop ITX, May 15 – 19 in Las Vegas, is the only independent conference for technology leaders. Get a year’s worth of objective IT education in one week. And don’t miss the Packet Pushers’ Future Of Networking Summit at Interop. Visit interopitx.com and use promo code PacketPushers for a 20% discount.

Show Links:

Juku

The OpenIO Blog

Enrico Signoretti on Twitter

On today’s Priority Queue, we explore DMEVPN, a open-source, proof of concept technology using a DMVPN-like construct for multipoint EVPN tunnels. By using DMEVPN, network engineers can extend layer-2 tunnels across an external IP network.

Joining us today is Saurabh Mohan, a software engineer who’s been building software products for the networking space for over 15 years now. Saurabh wrote up a detailed post on the DMEVPN code he’s created that actually works and is available on GitHub.

We get details from Saurabh on DMEVPN, how it differs from DMVPN, the use cases for DMEVPN implementations, and even a packet walk to to illustrate how it works. We also dive into VXLAN, NHRP, and IPSec. Strap in because this one gets nerdy.

Show Links:

DMEVPN: DMVPN based alternative to EVPN – Packet Pushers

DMEVPN on GitHub – Saurabh Mohan

 

If you’re a technology professional, you likely take pride in your mastery of intricate and complicated systems, software, and hardware. And as you invest time and effort to acquire skills and expertise, your technical savvy becomes part of your identity.

But as your career advances, you may find yourself spending less time on nerd knobs and more time on issues such as strategy, management, or communications. And sometimes your career might take you in interesting, if less technical, directions than you’d anticipated.

On today’s Datanauts episode, we talk about how to cope with moving into less technical roles, how to balance keeping your technical knowledge sharp against the new demands of your role, whether you should continue to pursue certifications, and how to embrace and excel in the different competencies that your new work requires.

Our guest is Tom Hollingsworth, a CCIE and network engineer who’s now an organizer at Tech Field Day, which connects IT vendors and tech bloggers for presentations and discussions. He’ll share his experiences as he’s transitioned from an in-the-weeds engineer to helping build a technology events and media company. You can read his blog at Networking Nerd and follow his Twitter alter-ego CCIE Coffee.

Sponsor: Incapsula

Incapsula is a cloud-based service from Imperva that protects and accelerates your Web sites with services including DDoS and bot protection, traffic inspection, load balancing, and CDN. Incapsula protects over 4 million Web properties, from individual bloggers to the Fortune 50. Datanauts listeners can try Incapsula free! Just go to incapsula.com/packetpushers.

Startups sound like a great place to work. There’s dogs and foosball in the office, beer and munchies in the break room, free hoodies, and the tantalizing potential to earn crazy amounts of money.

But is working for a startup really all that great? Today’s Priority Queue cut through the glamor and shine that gets lacquered onto the startup industry to explore dank and distressing truths, including failure, hard labor, and flailing strategies.

Our guest is Aneel Lakhani. He’s worked at startups, big tech companies, analyst firms, and is now back in the startup world in technical marketing. We drill into the difficulties of running a startup, examine why it’s so hard to get teams to work together, and explore some of the quotidian realities (like the insane cost of living in Silicon Valley) that take the shine off the startup dream.

This isn’t Aneel’s first time on the Packet Pushers. He was guest on Show 137 – Gartner Is Not For Sale with @Aneel Lakhani.

You can also see more from Aneel below, and read his blogs on Medium.

We are not who we think we are – Aneel Lakhani – YouTube

Monktoberfest 2016: Aneel Lakhani – How Not to Get Rich in Tech – YouTube

Today on the Datanauts: public clouds. AWS and Azure are two of the most popular public cloud offerings, and we’ll look at how they compare. Our guest is Eric Shanks, a senior solutions architect at Ahead and founder of the blog The IT Hollow.

We’ll look at how organizations decide which cloud service to adopt, the phobias around cloud lock-in, the application architecture decisions that have to be made when embracing the cloud, and myths about cloud savings.

We also explore the differences between AWS and Azure around pricing and capability, and also discuss the importance of understanding the constraints that come with a cloud service regardless of the provider you choose.

Last but not least we drill into workload mobility and the stickiness of storage, and whether orchestration tools may be the driver of true hybrid clouds.

Sponsor: Interop ITX

Interop ITX, May 15 – 19 in Las Vegas, is the only independent conference for technology leaders. Get a year’s worth of objective IT education in one week. And don’t miss the Packet Pushers’ Future Of Networking Summit at Interop. Visit interopitx.com and use promo code PacketPushers for a 20% discount.