It's been a while, hope all are well. This is a behind the scenes update to share with you what has been going on with us at NC and where we are headed. Short story, we've taken a break but are getting back to it with new content, new ideas, and quite a few changes. If you want a heads up on what is coming, give this episode a listen. If you like surprises, well just ride it out and you'll see soon enough. It's good to be back. 

In this episode, Phil and Brandon interview Kary Rogers, AKA PacketBomb, and discuss the need to drill down into packets when troubleshooting. The group shares a few stories from the trenches on how packets helped them solve issues and Kary explains how he got started looking at Packets for deeper information.

Reference Links:

• https://community.riverbed.com
• https://riverbed.com

The post The Packets Never Lie appeared first on Network Collective.

A few weeks ago we released an episode on the fundamentals of gRPC. And while programmatic interfaces are excellent tools for network automation, often that is only the beginning of the story. That’s no exception with gRPC. In this episode we continue down the path of that gRPC conversation and into gNMI, a standards based approached to programmatic interaction with network devices utilizing gRPC. We discuss what it is, how it works, and where it stands in today’s fast moving environment.

Relevant Links:

• Cisco’s reference to using gNMI with Python
• Nick Russo’s Evolving Technologies book
• gNMIc Tool

Outro Music: Danger Storm Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

The post What is gNMI? appeared first on Network Collective.

In this episode we will discuss the idea of SD-WAN vs. Application Acceleration and WANop.  With the proliferation of SD-WAN we’ve heard a lot of people say that SD-WAN gives you the traffic control, but does it negate the need for application acceleration or WAN optimization tools?  We attack this common misconception and discuss our stance on the matter in this episode.

Reference Links:

• https://www.riverbed.com/blogs/sd-wan-or-wan-optimization.html
• https://community.riverbed.com
• https://riverbed.com

The post The case for App Acceleration with SD-WAN appeared first on Network Collective.

As the world of network automation continues to evolve, we are seeing different options emerge in how we programmatically interface with our devices. In this episode we take a look at one of the newest and more interesting methods, gRPC. gRPC was developed by Google as a way to execute remote procedure calls in the orchestration of their system and includes such concepts as Protocol Buffers, authentication, bidirectional streaming, and flow control. Join us as we dive into how gRPC works, why it’s different than what you may already know, and why you may want to look into using it to orchestrate your infrastructure.

Outro Music: Danger Storm Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

The post Introduction To gRPC appeared first on Network Collective.

In this episode, we talk with Dinesh Dutt, former Cisco Fellow & Cumulus Chief Scientist, and Justin Pietsch, former AWS veteran, about SuzieQ. SuzieQ is an open source network observability platform they launched last year. We talk about the general problem space of network monitoring and how the industry needs better tools to understand operational state data.

Reference Links:

• https://github.com/netenglabs/suzieq
• https://suzieq.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
• https://elegantnetwork.github.io/index.html

Outro Music: Danger Storm Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

The post SuzieQ with Dinesh Dutt and Justin Pietsch appeared first on Network Collective.

In this episode we discuss the 80/20 rule for SaaS and IaaS, what it is according to Vince, and why you should care. Is this a temporary phenomenon due to the pandemic and WFH or is it how we should view WAN traffic from now on?  We’ll answer that question and more in this episode.

Reference Links:

• https://community.riverbed.com
• https://riverbed.com

The post 80/20 Rule For SaaS and IaaS appeared first on Network Collective.

In looking back on 2020 we think about all of the things we did to keep ourselves busy.

Some of us starting baking bread at home, some started home gardens, and if you are part of the networking twitter community you probably saw a lot of folks chasing some new certifications.

Throughout 2020, with isolation and the pandemic in full swing, networking vendors and certification facilitators found ways to serve the community by providing remote exams and free trainings.

Whether it was the need to stay busy or trying to learn something new, whatever your reason is to pursue a new certification, the question is which one?

With 2020 now behind us and our future constantly changing, which certifications will give you the biggest impact for 2021 and beyond?

In today’s episode we talk to 2 prominent networking influencers:

• Ernest the “Cisco Panther” and
• Yasmin Lara the “mom who can fix anything”

We’ll go over topics covering

• their certification journey
• how it’s positioned them to continue growth throughout the pandemic and
• which certifications give you the best bang for your buck for 2021 and beyond.

Outro Music: Danger Storm Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

The post High Value Certifications For 2021 And Beyond appeared first on Network Collective.

In this episode, we sit down with Ivan Pepelnjak and talk about the state of networking.  We briefly talk about cloud-networking and move onto network automation discussing the pros & cons of the various solutions and frameworks in the market highlighting the importance of extensibility.  Finally, we talk about Ivan’s new open source project targeted to simplify the process of standing up a new virtual lab environment.

Relevant Links

• https://github.com/ipspace/netsim-tools

Outro Music: Danger Storm Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

The post The State Of Networking With Ivan Pepelnjak appeared first on Network Collective.

Networking is one of the industries where every time a good idea comes around it doesn’t take long for that idea to get coopted and turned into something to sell products, often drastically changing the intent of the original idea. Today we’re going to try to roll back the clock a bit and discuss the original idea around Intent Based Networking. What is it? What does it mean for you? And how do products fit into the original intent.

• Compare/contrast the original intent of Intent Based Networking with what it has been marketed as
• Trajectory towards Intent Based Networks
  • Traditional models
  • Automation added
  • Orchestration added
  • Intent added
• Three pillars of Intent Based Networking
  • Defining Intent
  • Fulfilling Intent
  • Assuring Intent
• Gaps between the vision and current reality
• Approach vs. Product – what’s the right way to think about Intent Based Networking

Outro Music: Danger Storm Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

The post The Real Intent Behind Intent Based Networking appeared first on Network Collective.