The Fat Pipe - All Packet Pushers Pods

In this episode of IPv6 Buzz, we examine how and why to make the transition from a dual-stack to an all-v6 world. Our guest is Veronika McKillop, network architect at Microsoft and president/chair of the UK IPv6 Council.

Imagine you’ve got to build a network that delivers data no matter what, because the mission is critical.

And not just “mission critical” in the business sense–sometimes actual lives are at stake.

However, the constraints are enormous. All you’ve got to work with are satellite links with high latency and low throughput, no terrestrial infrastructure unless you provide it yourself, the very highest imaginable security requirements, and a limited budget.

This scenario is normal for the military. Here to chat with us about networking in this highly specialized environment is PC Drew.

We discuss issues such as working with bandwidth constraints, hostile environments, training and skills development, and more.

Drew is a major in the Marine Corps Reserve and was on active duty for ten years. He’s currently CTO at SchoolBlocks, and has a background in network and software engineering.

There’s a lot of interesting points in this show, so we’ve pasted the entirety of our show notes below.

Show Notes:

* We did a show with Peter Wohlers on the future of networking, which was also a bit of a look back at some evolution…QoS, SDN, etc. Some of that conversation had you both agreeing and disagreeing with us. Explain.

* Snowflake networks

* Unique configurations vs unique requirements/constraints vs unique networks

* Often, a “snowflake network” is a sign that it is misconfigured (not always…there are some actual unique requirements!)

* “QoS is the devil’s work” and “just get a bigger pipe”.

* It is the devil’s work–it’s hard, but necessary

* Many people can’t “just get a bigger pipe”–need to understand how to maximize what you have

* Overlaying networks adds significant complexity to an already complex environment (avoid tunnels!)

* Although we need tunnels, they make our lives harder.  Sometimes they’re required and other times they’re an indicator of an architecture that was not designed appropriately.

* Path MTU issues that Peter described also happen on overlay networks, where <1500 byte frames are common.

* MSS and TCP Windowing also play a role here

* Commoditization of network skills.  Deep technical experience is hard to come by in public AND private sectors.  How do you run global operations with less experienced people?

* Military networks are rather specialized. Can you describe some of the common constraints?

* Running military communications is often like someone walking into a field in the middle of nowhere and telling you: “I want all the capabilities that I have in my office….right here…in a few hours.”

* We’re often given very little requirements and asked to just “build it.”  Sometimes with very little notice.

* In practice, everything is limited by survivability, logistics, and bandwidth.

* Survivability

* Elements such as sand, water, heat/cold, unstable power, etc

* Mobility challenges (a force on the move)

* A thinking enemy (kinetic and cyber attacks)

* Physical security (concertina wire, barriers, being able to inspect cables for tampering, etc)

* Cyber security (evaluating your own posture, understanding the enemy’s capabilities and limitations, having tools that detect and potentially respond to network anomalies)

* Logistics

* In many cases, you have to pack up everything you need and take it with you.

Mode briefed Ethan Banks about their cloud private network. Whoa! Thought Mode was an SD-WAN company? Not quite. Mode partners with several SD-WAN platforms so that it’s easy to stand up a tunnel from your SD-WAN forwarders to Mode’s private network. That makes Mode a network alternative to private MPLS that integrates with your SD-WAN fabric.

As a Mode customer, you can spin up and spin down virtual networks on the fly, optimizing each virtual network for whatever characteristics you find most important–jitter, latency, loss, etc. How does Mode enforce the SLA required to meet your goals? Math! Math that was sorted out at Cornell University and is brought to life as HALO, a link-state algorithm that reacts to changes in traffic flows across the network, flooding link state changes in 150ms.

The result is a dynamic, routed network that is optimized for your specific needs. Listen in the audio player above for Ethan’s impressions.

For More Information

* https://www.mode.net

* HALO: Hop-by-Hop Adaptive Link-State Optimal Routing (PDF, academic research paper)

Today on the Datanauts we tackle Virtual Desktop Infrastructure, or VDI.

Our guest is Johan van Amersfoort, Technical Marketing Architect and EUC specialist at ITQ Consultancy. He’s author of the new book VDI Design Guide.

Johan and the Datanauts explore the business requirements for undertaking a VDI project, including reducing OpEx, improving security, and addressing the challenges of a mobile workforce and BYOD.

They review potential gotchas in a VDI design, and then drill into the elements your design must account for, including the network, CPU and RAM, host sizing, and failover.

In part three, Johan discusses how to handle remote users, whether to run AV, and identity and access control issues.

Sponsor: ITProTV

Join ITProTV to learn the skills to pass the most in-demand IT certs. It’s binge-worthy learning! ITProTV’s extensive course library includes CEH v9, CISA, CompTIA A+, Mac Certified Support Professional, and more!

Visit itpro.tv/data and use code DATANAUTS to try it FREE for 7 days, and receive 30% off your monthly membership for the lifetime of your active subscription.

Show Links:

VDI Design Guide: A comprehensive guide to help you design VMware Horizon, based on 2018 standards – Amazon

Johan on Twitter

VDI Design Guide on Twitter

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 today’s Priority Queue podcast I chat with Andrew Mortensen about Distributed Denial Of Service Open Threat Signaling, or DOTS, an active IETF working group.

DOTS enables disparate DDoS products and services to interact so they can request, coordinate, and terminate mitigation efforts.

We discuss the rationale for DOTS, examine use cases, and look at the architecture that enables communication and coordination. We also look at how DOTS relates to, and differs from, BGP Flowspec.

Andrew is Principal Architect at Arbor Networks, the security division of NetScout.

This episode was recorded live at the 102nd meeting of the Internet Engineering Task Force in Montreal.

Show Links:

DDoS Open Threat Signaling (dots) – IETF

Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Open Threat Signaling Requirements – IETF

Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Open Threat Signaling Architecture – IETF

PQ Show 78: BGP Flowspec For DoS Mitigation – Packet Pushers

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

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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

Listen to the latest IPv6 Buzz podcast as we discuss the challenge of measuring and managing IPv6 deployments and learn how monitoring can optimize performance. Our guest is Dr. Ciprian Popoviciu, IPv6 expert and author.

Welcome to a cloud native architecture discussion on the Datanauts podcast. Today we blast off into the microservices galaxy and orbit the binary star system of Istio and Envoy.

That’s right. A proxy for every microservice instance. What’s that you say? Too hard to manage? Infinite points of failure? Will we orbit successfully, or crash into the fiery cores of these burning stars? Hang in there, and we’ll find out.

Our guide to this galaxy is Christian Posta, Chief Architect, Cloud Application Development at Red Hat.

We start with an overview of Envoy (an application-level proxy) and Istio (management software or the control plane for service meshes).

Envoy and Istio were developed to help solve the problem of how to get various service elements to talk to each other to provide a fully-functioning application.

We also look at how Envoy, Istio, and an orchestrator such Kubernetes work together in a microservices architecture.

In part two, we dive into the main use cases or capabilities of Istio, including traffic management, observability, policy enforcement, and service identity and security.

In part three, Christian walks us through day-two operations of running Envoy and Istio in production.

Sponsor: ITProTV

Join ITProTV to learn the skills to pass the most in-demand IT certs. It’s binge-worthy learning! ITProTV’s extensive course library includes CEH v9, CISA, CompTIA A+, Mac Certified Support Professional, and more!

Visit itpro.tv/data and use code DATANAUTS to try it FREE for 7 days, and receive 30% off your monthly membership for the lifetime of your active subscription.

Show Links:

Envoy Project Home

Istio Project Home

Microservices Patterns With Envoy Sidecar Proxy, Part I: Circuit Breaking – Christian Posta’s blog

Microservices Patterns With Envoy Proxy, Part II: Timeouts and Retries – Christian Posta’s blog

Microservices Patterns With Envoy Proxy, Part III: Distributed Tracing – Christian Posta’s blog

Deep Dive Envoy and Istio Workshop – Christian Posta’s blog

Istio Deep Dive with Dan Berg and Zack Butcher (video) – YouTube

Introducing Istio Service Mesh for Microservices (free e-book, regwall) – RedHat

Building Service Meshes With Avi Networks (Sponsored) – Packet Pushers

Full Stack Journey 018: Istio, Envoy & Service Meshes – Packet Pushers

Chri...

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

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