The Fat Pipe - All Packet Pushers Pods

On today's Priority Queue, wireless engineer Lee Badman shares a real-world detective tale about a troubleshooting problem that took him into dark places involving wires.

Do you take layer 1 for granted? Let’s think for a moment.

How old is that cabling plant? Two years? Five years? Ten or more years? Don’t know and don’t really want to know? As you bring new equipment online, you might need to care.

Our guest today is Lee Badman, known largely for his wireless prowess, writing at wirednot.wordpress.com. But our chat today is as much about wire as it is about wireless.

Lee wrote a blog post talking through how, after a switch upgrade, some wireless access points weren’t coming online.

Warning. The story takes us to some very dark places. Listeners with weak hearts be advised.

Show Links:

Another Example Of How Important Wire Is To Wireless – Wirednot (Lee’s source article that prompted this episode)

Lee Badman on Twitter

Lee’s #WIFIQ Twitter series

Lee on LinkedIn

Stay on top of the latest IT news with Network Break. Today's episode examines Linus Torvald's public apology, new edge software from Juniper, AWS hardware for the enterprise, the latest VMware hybrid cloud partnership and more tech news.

On today's Weekly Show podcast we dive into Fabric Connect with sponsor Extreme Networks and a customer. We get a real-world look at how Fabric Connect creates an Ethernet fabric across the network, and what that means for operations, security, and automation.

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

Today's IPv6 Buzz podcast dives into the critical relationship between IPv6 and DNS with guest Cricket Liu, author and Senior Fellow at Infoblox. We drill into DNS64 and DNSSEC, and look into DNS's future.

Everyone talks about cloud and a lot of people are rushing to the public cloud, in part because cloud providers make it so easy to spin up resources and get started.

But you can build a private cloud and have the same benefits–ease of use, self-service, and accountability–within your own data center.

On today’s Datanauts podcast, we break down what it takes to build out a private cloud on your premises.

Our guest is Rita Younger, National Practice Lead SDDC / SDN and Technical Innovation Group at CDW. You can find her on Twitter as @SDN_GIRL.

Our three-part show covers the following:

Part 1: Changes To Physical Infrastructure

* Why you need to understand traffic flows

* The importance of network analytics

* Three-tier vs. leaf-spine architectures

* How hyperconverged affects infrastructure

Part 2: Private Cloud Benefits

* What are the characteristics of a private cloud: orchestration, automation, APIs?

* Dealing with operational complexity

* Intent-based networking

* Whether applications need to be changed to run in an elastic environment

Part 3: Breaking Down the Silos

* How does cloud reorganize traditional IT roles?

* Why cross-silo collaboration is essential

* Who’s responsible for automation and orchestration?

* How to do analytics right

Sponsor: Linux Academy

No matter where you are in your career, train with Linux Academy and develop the in-demand skills businesses are looking for. Linux Academy does training differently. New training content launching in November. Don’t let the cloud leave you behind. For a limited time save $150. Get more details at Linux Academy.

Show Notes:

Total Packets.com

Rita Younger’s Blog On CDW

Everyone talks about cloud and a lot of people are rushing to the public cloud, in part because cloud providers make it so easy to spin up resources and get started.

But you can build a private cloud and have the same benefits–ease of use, self-service, and accountability–within your own data center.

On today’s Datanauts podcast, we break down what it takes to build out a private cloud on your premises.

Our guest is Rita Younger, National Practice Lead SDDC / SDN and Technical Innovation Group at CDW. You can find her on Twitter as @SDN_GIRL.

Our three-part show covers the following:

Part 1: Changes To Physical Infrastructure

* Why you need to understand traffic flows

* The importance of network analytics

* Three-tier vs. leaf-spine architectures

* How hyperconverged affects infrastructure

Part 2: Private Cloud Benefits

* What are the characteristics of a private cloud: orchestration, automation, APIs?

* Dealing with operational complexity

* Intent-based networking

* Whether applications need to be changed to run in an elastic environment

Part 3: Breaking Down the Silos

* How does cloud reorganize traditional IT roles?

* Why cross-silo collaboration is essential

* Who’s responsible for automation and orchestration?

* How to do analytics right

Sponsor: Linux Academy

No matter where you are in your career, train with Linux Academy and develop the in-demand skills businesses are looking for. Linux Academy does training differently. New training content launching in November. Don’t let the cloud leave you behind. For a limited time save $150. Get more details at Linux Academy.

Show Notes:

Total Packets.com

Rita Younger’s Blog On CDW

Network Break reviews the latest IT news. On today's episode Cisco upgrades its ASR 9000 platform, Arista buys a maker of FPGA-powered switches, mobile carriers partner on an SSO service, Marvell steps away from programmable ASICs, and more.

Running applications in a multi-cloud environment presents serious networking challenges. On today's sponsored Weekly Show, we talk with Avi Networks about how its software-based ADC and load balancer can help customers working in multi-cloud environments ensure application delivery, provide security, and enable automation at scale.