Tag Archives: Packetpushers

Y U NO LIKE CHANGE?

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Disruption and change. Something that makes managers sphincters twitch and 9-5 IT staff groan that more work is coming. You know what? Deal with it. Why am I being a cocky and high-horse like? Well, I’ve had a dose of vision and I am making some noise. Plus it makes sense!

Disruptive IT changes are not only coming but are here. BigSwitch announced their SDN offering. The Packet pushers don’t talk about something regular for a year because it is a fad. Whether you like it or not, it is time to peel down your cubes wall. Time to look beyond your bubble and look at the large-scale. The mindset of “How will this help ME?” is wrong. You need to think :”how will this help  us as an Industry?” We currently have IANA registrars who have run out of IPv4 addresses. The migration to IPv6 has been happening since I was in primary school yet people are now realising they cannot hide behind the cosiness of IPv4 and NAT. Yet it seems we are doing a last-minute, knee-jerk, fear driven migration. Why? Many have thrown their heads into the sand because it is too hard, we can’t afford downtime, or simply are too ignorant. SDN is another example of this. The fact that flow-based networking based on source as well as destination changes the game. The fact that SDN is defined as one and many things gives people the ability to hide behind the ” too much information” wall again.

Show 124 of the Packet Pushers podcast is responsible for this post. Go listen now! 

Change is big. Change is disruptive. Change is also necessary but Blind ignorance is just plain dangerous. Get the facts. Read, learn, talk, discuss, chat, explore, look to apply. Fantastic technology is coming and all verticals need to open their eyes and get on board.

 

 

MPLS Fight Night LIVE

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Currently Greg Ferro is duking it out with Cloud toad about MPLS. Is it dead? Will Ivan’s books be put to bed for ever? Find out. I will live blog this event – first attempt at this sort of thing. Lets see how this goes. Follow this link to join

May the best fighter win.

Live Stream

8:20 – Greetings and welcomes. Chats and mic testings.
8:30 – The realization that the cage match is freaking awesome. Still in holding pattern.
8:31 – 300 odd signups and very smart people getting in. Jeff Fry, Lindsey Hill, Nicolas Michel, to name a few.
8:35 – Derick is here.  Final checks.
8:48 – Cloud toad is here. Technology sorted. Microphone jack into RJ45 ;)
8:50 – Derick’s dulcet tones are resonating. Introductions and Welcomes.
8:51 – Derick’s clogging drains with MPLS tags, Greg “Crusty” Ferro – Python Invoker and Compass SPF wielder.
8:52 – Lets get ready to RUMMMMMMMMMBBBBBLE!
8:53 – Greg is collecting honey and angry and SDN is the way while Derick believes MPLS tool where you can have software written above the network. Ethan jests Greg is a tool too ;)
8:55 – GF: MPLS is NAT! (eww) Essentially nat (label) and then un-nat (pop label). Good call. Duct Tape of networking. Cannot configure MPLS in virtual environment. Cannot configure VRF to Hyper visor.   MPLS has no part to play in the DC; therefore dead!
8:58 – DW: Servers increase network functionality. Overlays terminating. The new edge. MPLS doesn’t need to go to hyper visor. MPLS abstracts the network away from provisioning on top. Isolated forwarding path with simple import/export. Build VRF and Overlay. MPLS = build services over the network. Has role at the edge of the DC. L2 spanning DC is a bad idea. Agrees with Ivan P’s thoughts on this.
9:00 – GF: No API support for MPLS. Not programmable.
9:01 – DW: What is the need? What is replacing MPLS? Same work must be done.  Abstraction still need to be made.
9:01 – GF: Must have an API due to multiple vendor implementations. How do you product a constant platform over the top?
9:02 – DW: Common problem. Vendors need to fit into abstraction model. You need it no matter if you use SDN or MPLS to abstract!
9:05 – DW and GF : Let’s avoid a Orchestration discussion.
9:06 –  DW: Cisco/Juniper translators are required no matter what. Value of puppet, chef, openstack that allows interaction and vendor translators make magic happen.
9:07  - GF: SNMP queries are the only reliable thing to pull interface stats. MPLS needs this. Until then…
9:08 – GF: Stuck in the Dark Forest of Broccoli Despair – looking at MPLS and what information he can get and cannot see unless he makes dirty scripts or manual look up. Extracting route targets and route descriptors.
9:10 – DW: Roll up the sleeves and work with what we have.
9:12 – EB : Answer DW question. Tool of choice today and Globally deployed. How is it even dying?
9:12 – GF: We have a choice. Best answer? Program the TCAM directly with Open-flow  Time and money is wasted pursuing MPLS. Keep on bolting on. MPLS-TE, MPLS-TP, MPLS over UDP over GRE, EVPN. show that is is broken. MPLS is now juice less. Dumb stateless Network protocol. Each router has to have a mapping. Overlay propagates  tags. Costly to work one way. Costly to groom it. Dead!
9:15 – DW: MPLS is well know, it works. It isn’t as hard as you make it sound. Easy to deploy and lost cost. Growing in popularity. Not convinced it has to be centrally controlled. Open Flow will mutate like MPLS – stuff got bolted on. Derick predicted this in a PP blog. Widely used platform vs SDN which is narrow acute penetration.
9:17 – GF: ATM failed. MPLS will continue to be used in their central control plains. Carriers figure out with massive software deployments to monitor MPLS. They leave the mental comprehension of normal people and rely on machine.
9:19 – DW: You need monitoring for SDN too
9:19 – GF: Yes but MPLS can bite you in the ass no matter the size. Stops people doing dumb things. Tags can get out of hand.
9:20 – DW: Formulating response.
9:20 – GF: Good intentions with “poor” MPLS deployment. Separation by a 20 bit tag MPLS.
9:21 – DW: They are separated still. SDN is the same.
9:22 – GF: Agreed but….
9:22 – DW: Networking in a horrid state. “OH the humanity”. The course of humanity is altered by networks today. Essentially things that Greg is arguing about are orchestration, not MPLS issues.

Side Note -

[9:22:16 AM] Kurt Bales: Derrick’s arguement is that things Greg is complaining about are orchestration problems
[9:22:24 AM] Kurt Bales: *not* MPLS problems
[9:22:34 AM] Anthony Burke: Yeah
[9:22:57 AM] Kurt Bales: the exact same problems will happen with OpenFlow if the orchestration side isnt sorted out

9:23 – DW: version of openflow, operational ability and more. Concedes a point to Greg – driving the hope for SDN, program ability tools that make things easier to people. Why haven’t we built tools for automation processes that adds and subtracts IP’s. Why is it coded? Why do we need graph theory to do automation?
9:27 – GF: Why haven’t we converged around it yet? Why aren’t we using it? SDN and MPLS are a match made in heaven. Same as TRILL and STP.
9:28 – DW: I don’t have psychic powers yet. MPLS may die soon, who knows.
9:29 – GF: Drawing on experience – MPLS has hallmarks of death.
9:29 – DW: CLI isn’t the future. The future is orchestrating network elements.
9:30 – GF: Agrees. Wont be the primary use.
9:31 – EB: You boys are conceding little ones begrudgingly.
9:32 – EB Questions?

Not bad guys. Not bad. Stubborn but not bad :)

Plenty of fun to be hard. Read this by Brent Salisbury in the use of MPLS in the Enterprise .

Thanks for the information guys. It was a great format. Maybe time for a Marko vs Ivan ISIS v OSPF Fight night. There would be blood.

 

All quiet at the Doubletree

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It is the morning after the week before. I have taken my first step into a larger world by the awesomeness that is Gestalt IT’s Network Field Day 4. I am the last delegate remaining at the SJC Doubletree Hilton and I write this with a Venti Starbucks. Waving goodbye to Greg Ferro after a great chat this morning made me realize something important; you are what you make yourself.

Delegates of NFD4 at Juniper HQ

Flight

My flight was great. Being a first time international traveler I have a newly minted passport, over packed suitcase, and every conceivable piece of travel advice including USA fun facts. I flew United Airlines and left Tuesday October 9 at 12:15pm. I flew Melbourne to Sydney then Sydney to San Francisco. My seat, 40A, was clean, spacious and a great view. The flight was relatively empty so I got to enjoy lounging about. The crew were friendly, fed and watered me. The total flight time was 15 hours 40 minutes and I arrived 11:15am Tuesday October 9. Doctor Who right there!

Transfers

Treated like a Rock-star  a personal car awaited me. I was whisked away in a Black Sedan Limo. The driver was friendly, pointed out the tech sites. With wifi in the car itself, I was able to tweet and email my safe arrival to my family and friends. I also started broadcasting my arrival.

Hotel

SJC Doubletree Hilton was nice. This old girl has been around for a while. Clean, Large, and having everything I need to feel right at home. The staff were happy to do anything, very friendly, and accommodating.  I received a hot double choc cookie on arrival. Only in America!

Sponsers

  • Juniper
  • Cisco Borderless
  • Opengear
  • Spirent
  • Brocade
  • Statseeker

Delegates

What can I say? This group of people are the who’s who of Networking right now and I cannot begin to feel how much their knowledge eclipsed mine. I felt very honored to be in a room with them let alone conversing with. From CCIEs of many disciplines, Financial networking experts, JNCIE’s, multi-tenant global DC experts and voice gurus, our group was phenomenal  There was even a lonesysadmin! :) These people are who I strive to be and I have learnt so much over the course of a few days. Where else can you stay up until 4am drinking beer and discussing network war stories! I feel smarter and have gained some fantastic life lessons. Thank you gang!

America

This country is cool. Tipping is weird but I get it. Anchor Steam beer is delicious! The night life of San Francisco is very hipster. I have a Dell so I felt very out of place. My IRC/Twitter friend Rob Gilreath was in the area for work and took me around. San Francisco’s Golden Gate bridge and surrounds. We cut across the mountains from San Jose City and went via Half Moon Bay to get there; it was very beautiful. Hipster Sushi was had at Blow fish Sushi. There were definitely some interesting characters there.

Packetpushers

Now this is awesome. A mini highlight of the trip. After the second day, Greg Ferro and some of the delegates raided Stephen Foskett’s suite and we recorded a packet-pushers wrap up episode. This was my first podcast I was a part of and it was a very exciting experience. I fear this is the reason I spoke so fast. Apologies to anyone listening if It was hard listening to me; I was a kid in a candy shop level of ecstatic.

Closing

Beers with architects/delegates, meetings with vendors, special tours, hardcore networking discussions over breakfast, and late nights arguing the latest posturing in Silicon Valley. This is a very small glimpse into what happens at Tech Field Days. All I can say is that I am a very lucky man. Lucky to be in such an industry. Lucky to be a part of such a diverse and dynamic industry that has some AMAZING people working in it.

A special thank you once again MUST go out to Stephen Foskett and Claire Chaplais for putting this on and extending an invitation to myself. Without their hard work there would be nothing.

Synergy Within Our Discipline

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** I initially posted this over at PacketPushers – Send them your love. **

Here ye. Here ye. Gather around now. I have a proposal for my fellow network engineers. Imagine a world where we could engineer without delay in management. Envisage an enterprise where every project need not be managed – especially by someone twice removed with a degree in Crop Management! Paint an image in your mind of autonomous flows, management packages that actually help not hinder, and Cloudtoad* running free among the unicorns and rainbows, at one with the packets.

Well, the truth is that there may not be a future as amazing as I pictured, and some of you may have nightmares about our dear, bearded, wise sage of networking running wild and free. But for all of the silliness, there is actually something achievable. Something that is obtainable – hell, even actionable this instant.

define synergy

noun syn er gy
synergies, plural

  1. The interaction or cooperation of two or more organizations, substances, or other agents to produce a combined effect greater than the sum of their separate effects

By definition, that word sounds like a joke. Especially in our industry that is bogged in procedure. I believe that an open mind is needed. We need to adjust our thinking. Our enemy goes by many names. Project managers, ITIL, and Gantt charts are a few. Yet they are but a single face to a foe which has thousands. We stand and face an adversary that is as vast as an ocean and can slow the fastest moving process to glacial speeds: adversity to change. We need combine our skills and produce something greater together than we can alone. We need synergy amongst the network engineering fraternity. We might just break a few myths about ourselves too! ^

“Surely you jest, Anthony. Nothing can defeat this,” you might say. Well, we can. Just as global warming is winning the fight for legitimacy, we can band together as a legitimate driving force. Help a fellow network engineer or implementor. Provide the information required to allow interconnectivity. Don’t be defensive. Don’t demand a Spanish Inquisition when someone makes a mistake. Ask if they need help. Don’t be condescending. Share knowledge. Blog. Tweet. Answer a forum question. We are of one breed. We are a multi-skilled and very well-equipped army. By keeping an open mind when discussing ideas, we can leap into greater things. Take criticism or be prepared to defend a design. Even if you out-skill or out-cert another engineer, it doesn’t mean their opinion is invalid. They are your brothers. They are your sisters. We are a family of engineers. Forego race, background, religion or skill-set in the equation.

Combined, we can speed up change. As the old adage goes, “Two heads are better than one.” We can progress and meet deadlines – deliver new technologies to harness the power of the future. Let’s deliver together the world of tomorrow, today. OTV, IPv6, SDN, TRILL, LISP – you name it. We can configure and deliver. Even if it is multi-partner, day-to-day business, this way of thinking still applies. Let us just work together united against all that seek to hinder. Grab your fellow engineer and hunt those naysayers to change. #

* Cloudtoad for me is an industry leader, and is depicted frolicking with unicorns as reward for such a coveted position!

^ Disclaimer: Myths may not be broken.

# Be aggressive in your pursuit of the naysayers to change but respect local laws. =)

Packet Pushers Podcast: Priority Queue

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Well again the boys have done it! A off shoot podcast regarding Industry Events, recordings about careers, and deep dives into odd topics that isn’t mainstream! Priority Queue launched and you need to check it out. Will be a great way to get insights into guests of the show and the happenings of the world around you!