The HP Public Cloud and OpenStack
We have listened to people ramble on about the promise of the cloud and the impact on infrastructure for a few years now, but very rarely has anyone articulated a reasonable blueprint on ramp into this public cloud. SaaS is everywhere, the application was and will continue to be the low hanging fruit, the rest is a bit more difficult. …
Why Enterprise Wireless Networks Got it Right
I wanted to post some 802.11 wireless usage numbers and device breakdowns. These are two week University usage numbers in August of 2012. This period is right before students return so I wanted a baseline to capture the diff when students 25,000+ students come back with the ever growing amount of 802.11 wireless enabled BYOD hidden in pockets and purses. …
Thoughts from the PacketPusher Show 112 SDN’s SDN’s Potential as a Displacement Technology
If anyone has not listened to the PackPusher Show 112 – SDN’s Potential as a Displacement Technology With Jeff Doyle & Bill it is a must listen. A comment made by Greg who has rationalized and articulated the SDN conversation as well or better than anyone so far got me thinking. It was something I had never heard anyone else …
Why Community Counts
I was graciously invited to join some of the best in the business which each of the folks rounding out my top 5 technologist hero list. The panel included Stephen Foskett, Brad Casemore, Ivan Pepelnjak and Greg Ferro to join Omar Sultan from Cisco to discuss the Cisco SDN strategies and what problems it may solve someday if the community makes it so. …
Nicira Acquisition by VMWare Winners and Losers
VMware acquired Nacira today. They were one of the two (not including Embrane) venture cap groups that came out of the of Stanford group that developed among other things the OpenFlow and much larger the concepts around making Software Defined Networks (SDN) a potential reality. They open sourced and upstreamed Open vSwitch, two big contributions. I hope this frees up …
SDN APIs- I Think I Have Seen This Movie Before
To see the future of SDN and arguably the future of networks, the roadmap is in our rear-view mirror. Like with most things the past holds the clues to the future and computing cycles fit that mold well. The Northbound API is starting to get some attention as there has been recent milestones in announcements regarding SDN support. There have …
New IETF SDN Drafts
New IETF SDN Drafts: A Service Provider SDN IETF Draft: There are four new drafts submitted to the IETF in the past few days. These are all informational drafts and a “work in progress” for the 6 month period after submission. It would be reasonable to expect vendors to seek some disruption to be triggered by having multiple standards bodies get involved …
TCAMs, SDN/OpenFlow and Why We Care
I recently meet Roy Chua and Matt Palmer over at SDN Central a few weeks ago. They have put together a really nice site dedicated to Software Defined Networks (SDN) and contributing to the community. They are really seasoned IT pros that have great vision. I posted a little bit of a refresher for some, or a primer for others regarding …
The Birth of an SDN Unicorn – Early OpenFlow Meeting Notes
The Birth of an SDN Unicorn – Early OpenFlow Meeting Notes: I wanted to share something I found very fun to read. These are the OpenFlow notes from the working group meetings at Stanford from 2010. The conversations are fascinating and the notes read like a book. While fun to read, I think it’s important to see what goes on …
It’s OK to Like OpenFlow
A trend is happening, seems like a recurring theme from vendors or pundits the past year has been to point out SDN is much larger than just OpenFlow. My question is, who thinks that SDN is exclusively OpenFlow? I am looking for the person who thinks this so I can understand the fuss. What is SDN? We already have …
Comparing Vmware vs. OpenStack
Comparing Vmware vs. OpenStack: I ran into a great slide deck Mirantis comparing VMware and OpenStack (Essex) and wanted to share it. I am not affiliated with Mirantis. I started to research a side by side comparison between OpenStack and VMware. The slide deck is really good and deserves more than a Tweet. VMware is a good tool for many …
Cisco onePK Announcement, big Surprise or About Time?
This week Cisco announced their new strategy for engaging software defined networks (SDN) with the announcement of the the onePK (Cisco One Platform Kit). I think we saw what I think most of us expected. I didn’t expect an DK, so that was a pleasant surprise. I know many folks especially from R&E have wanted that visibility into the planes of operation of their purchased networking …
Cisco Networkers Live CLUS or whatever we call it now SDN Predictions
I was emailing with my buddy Roy at SDN Central http://www.sdncentral.com/ about it would be fun to see a poll for people to guess what Cisco will do with their big SDN announcement. I jotted down four options that are all in the realm of possibility, or at least the same realm of if SDN makes sense and will adopt. Let’s say solar-system …
The Northbound API- A Big Little Problem
The Northbound API- A Big Little Problem : What is a Northbound API (Application Programming Interface) in SDN? The Northbound API is available on a SDN controller that allows for applications to interact with the controller. The controller in turn, interacts with the network hardware through the OpenFlow protocol to manipulate the flow tables and send instructions to the underlying network substrate. …
Help Wanted: Cultural Change
Help Wanted: Cultural Change: This post is low on the nerdalert meter and more of the arts, rather than the science. Earlier this year, Level3 blogged about their new initiative of training ~%20 of their 11,000 person staff to be “change agents” in order to cross-pollinate their peers, the notion that change is healthy for the company (speculating). Change is …
