The Everything Feed - All Packet Pushers Pods

Welcome to The Next Level! Most of us agree that continued training is critical to keeping up with new technology and advancing our careers. For instance, Datanauts 21 talked about how to beat skills entropy.

In this episode we’ll expand on that subject, and talk about it from the manager and trainer perspective. Joining us today is Colleen Morrissey, Senior Network Engineer and Adjunct Lecturer. You can follow her on Twitter at @colleencmw.

We discuss:

* Cisco Academy/Computer science courses

* Certification

* Reading

* Mentorship

* Hands-on experience

* Practicing labs

* Attending conferences

* Creating solution and network designs

* Podcasts (ISC2 counts as CPE, lol)

And special thanks to Tom Willner, who composed song “All We’ve Learned at Rensselaer” that we used at the end of the show. You can find out more about Tom, and hear more of his music, at tomwillner.com.

Sanity Check

Our Sanity Check segment tackles management questions from real engineers and IT pros. If you’d like to ask a question for an upcoming segment, send an email to [email protected] or check out our survey.

Welcome to the Next Level. On today’s show we talk about the ups and downs of consulting. If you are now or have been a consultant, we invite you to laugh, boo, chuckle and cheer along with us.

If you work with consultants or wonder what it would be like to work as a consultant, this is your chance to get the inside scoop.

We’re joined by two guests with consulting experience to talk about their experiences and share their insights about the pros and cons of the consulting life. Our guests are Rob Walker ([email protected]) and Jason Skala (@crumb4life).

Rob and Jason discuss the upsides of consulting, including the variety of work experiences you encounter and opportunities for education; and the downsides, such as being on call nights and weekends, long travel, and billing hours.

They also offer advice on getting into the consulting business, how to decide if it’s time to walk away, and more. It’s a forthright and and friendly conversation about the consulting life.

Sanity Check

Our Sanity Check segment tackles management questions from real engineers and IT pros. If you’d like to ask a question for an upcoming segment, send an email to [email protected] or check out our survey.

On today’s episode of The Next Level we talk about three essential ingredients for workplace performance, and a framework to measure that performance.

Joining us today is Dan Gold, an experienced thought leader in human resource management. Dan outlines three ingredients for maximizing performance:

* Knowledge, Skills, and Ability (owned by the employee)

* Desire to perform (0wned by the employee)

* Environment (owned by the employer)

Of course, performance is one thing. You also have to be able to measure that performance. Dan shares his tips for measurement, including:

* Setting expectations

* Seeing people doing the job the way they are expected to

* Giving feedback on what you’ve observed

If you’d like to reach Dan directly to get more insights, he’s at [email protected].

Sanity Check

Our Sanity Check segment tackles management questions from real engineers and IT pros. If you’d like to ask a question for an upcoming segment, send an email to [email protected] or check out our survey.

On today’s episode we talk about IT management, what makes someone an effective leader, and strategies for improving your management skills.

Being a manager isn’t just about setting strategy and giving orders. It’s about relationships and communication. We delve into how communication preferences affect managers and their reports, how management style can affect employee motivation, when to include subordinates in decision-making, and more.

Joining us to share their management experiences are David Kaiser, Service Delivery Manager at Akron General; and Tony Lupis, Network Engineering Manager at FactSet Research Systems.

Sanity Check

Our Sanity Check segment tackles management questions from real engineers and IT pros. If you’d like to ask a question for an upcoming segment, send an email to [email protected] or check out our survey.

Today on the Packet Pushers Priority Queue, we step out of the data center, away from the hot aisle, take out our spectrum analyzers, shoo away the pigeons, and discuss outdoor wireless. Specifically, we’re going to go after point-to-point wireless and wireless backhaul with our sponsor, Cambium Networks.

Cambium Networks specializes in fixed outdoor wireless broadband in the unlicensed 5GHz/2.4Ghz spectrum, handling challenging wireless interference from 2 meters to 245 kilometers.

The company connects backhaul systems, WiFi networks, video cameras and other systems.

Our guests from Cambium are Sakid Ahmed, Senior Director of Engineering; Dmitry Moiseev, Systems Engineer; and Alex Marcham, Systems Engineer.

Greg and Ethan dive in with their guests to talk about Cambium’s product line, including the ePMP product, which is specifically designed for outdoor use. They discuss how Cambium handles outdoor interference, including other radio signals, and uses a deterministic system to adapt modulation levels to ensure a strong signal even in noisy environments.

And because Cambium radios are designed for point-to-point links, deployment is fairly simple and doesn’t require an expert installer. Cambium includes AES 128-bit encryption support to ensure data is encrypted in transit.

Cambium offers cnMaestro, a cloud-based management system that provides visibility to all APs and modules. Operators can configure and manage their entire Cambium network from one place.

Use Cases

The primary use case for Cambium is operators providing Internet and VoIP services to home users. For instance, in a rural location, an operator can put Cambium equipment on a water tower, grain elevator or building and within a 60 degree or 90 degree sector provide broadband for hundreds of houses.

However, the company is also seeing growing adoption for connecting surveillance cameras for warehouses and other large commercial spaces, enterprise connectivity, WiFi hotspot backhaul, and organizations connecting multiple buildings on a campus.

Links

Cambium has a special offer for Packet Pushers listeners. The first 25 people to register at on cambiumnetworks.com/packetpushers will each get a pair of ePMP radios, while supplies last.

Cambium Networks

Cambium Networks Community Forum

Our guest today is Martin Casado, General Manager of the Network and Security Business Unit (NSBU) at VMware. He joins the Packet Pushers to get nerdy about where SDN and VMware’s NSX have been, and where they’re going in 2016.

On the business side, VMware announced this past week it has grown the NSX business to a $600 million run rate and tripled the number of paying customers year over year to 1,200. The number of customers running NSX in production has grown 5X, to more than 250.

In this wide-ranging conversation on the transformation of networking, we hit on four main subjects:

* SDN Evolution: We talk about how SDN discussions have moved from trying to understand the concepts to exploring business cases that drive deployment. And as network virtualization has moved into the mainstream, we dive into the relationship between physical and virtual networking.

* Open Source: We talk about the impact of standards bodies and open source software on networking, including projects such as Open vSwitch and the Congress project, which is an effort to translate business requirements into instructions and configurations that can be implemented automatically.

* NSX And ACI: Martin disputes the portrayal of VMware NSX and Cisco ACI as competing products. He notes both products are seeing great adoption, with many customers buying both. We talk about how NSX provides the virtualization layer, and ACI provides a robust network fabric. As both products advance, Martin anticipates that areas of overlap will shrink.

* Distributed Network Services: When you virtualize the network, you can run functions such as firewalls and load balancers out at the edges, and spread the load of those services across multiple CPUs. This enables fine-grained provisioning and resource accounting, and will enable new capabilities and enhance the operational value of network virtualization.

Links:

The Packet Pushers have had several discussions with VMware around NSX, network virtualization, security, and containers. Check out these other podcasts:

PQ Show 67: VMware NSX Everywhere With Guido Appenzeller (Sponsored)

PQ Show 56 – VMware NSX In Production – Sponsored

Show 161 – VMware NSX – Real World SDN – Sponsored

On today’s Priority Queue, sponsored by Sonus Networks, we examine three use cases for VellOS, Sonus’s product that lets customers program a network to customize it for their environments.

Joining us from Sonus for the discussion are Dan Malek, Software Engineering Fellow; and Karl May, VP, VellOS Business Unit.

We’ll drill into the details of three VellOS use cases, and explore both the technology aspects of the product and the business problems you can solve.

Use Cases

* Enterprise SD-WAN. The first use case revolves around reducing costs for enterprise WAN connectivity while also ensuring high performance for applications and network resilience, using off-the-shelf, OpenFlow-compatible switches in conjunction with the VellOS controller. Customers can mix and match carriers and connectivity types, including MPLS, dark fiber, and broadband, and choose application paths based on criteria including performance and cost.

* Service provider interconnects. The second use case is for international carriers that are building interconnects with other providers across geographic regions. VellOS allows carriers to enforce QoS and other customer policies on a peer’s network.

* Multitenant interconnects for colocation providers. The third use case discusses how a data center/colocation operator can install high-bandwidth interconnects that can be shared with a large number of tenants. VellOS creates a shared infrastructure that lets the operator carve up bandwidth and provide network services and requirements on demand. VellOS flow control provides multitenancy separation.

Links:

If you want to learn more about Sonus and VellOS, you can check out the resource page Real-time Service Quality for Unified Communications.

You can also get more details from the blog posts QoS Done Right and Leveraging SD-WAN For Skype For Business Enterprise Voice.

And be sure to check out other podcasts from Sonus, including Packet Pushers Weekly Show 253 and PQ Show 69: Sonus VellOS And QoE For Unified Communications (Sponsored).

Getting IT projects funded and justifying IT spending can be complex and frustrating. On today’s episode we talk about financial strategies for IT with real-world executives to give you ideas and insights you can bring to your organization.

Our guests are Allen Ingram, former CTO of Associated Estates Realty Corporation; and Jonathan Feldman, CIO of the City of Asheville, NC.

We talk about what kinds of cost justifications are useful when looking to get IT projects funded, the time value of money, how to communicate the value of IT projects and investments, how to build credibility with business peers, and other issues regarding budgets and funding.

Links:

Follow Jonathan Feldman on Twitter, check out his blog, and sign up for his IT Leadership Bootcamp.

Check out other episodes of The Next Level:

The Next Level: Building A Technical Team

The Next Level: IT As A Revenue Center

Today’s podcast is sponsored by Kentik, a startup that’s just recently come out of stealth. Kentik offers real-time network visibility for service providers, Web companies, and enterprises.

Kentik’s SaaS offering collects flows, including Netflow, sFlow, and IPFIX, as well as BGP and SNMP, and analyzes all this data to help operators determine if availability or performance problems are network-related.

If they are, Kentik can drill into flow records to show when and where the problem started, whether it’s on an internal or external network, and other essential information to help resolve the issue.

Customers can encrypt and upload flow records to Kentik’s service. Records are stored in a Big Data backend. A portal provides dashboards for immediate analysis of incoming data, and customers can also run SQL queries against the backend. Kentik also offers a premises version for customers uncomfortable with the SaaS option.

Avi Freedman, CEO and co-founder of Kentik, joins the Packet Pushers to talk about how Kentik works, how the service extracts value from flow information, how Kentik compares to other visibility and monitoring products, and shares customer use cases.

It’s a nerdy, detailed discussion on getting insight from flows and other data sources.