How I Learned to Hate the DCI

How I Learned to Hate the DCI: Layer 2 data center interconnects (DCI) is still alive and well. I blame VMware with vMotion and now every other Hypervisor vendor on the planet. Live workload migration is certainly vital to most operations. The further up the stack that happens the more flexibility you have with choosing more layers beneath… Continue reading How I Learned to Hate the DCI

Why the NOS will decouple

Over the next couple of years some of us expect the networking industry to have some fairly significant changes. There are really two options: A distributed approach we have today or a controller based centralized model. We  have today just that, autonomous devices building adjacencies to one another, exchanging what it hopes are the best healthy paths… Continue reading Why the NOS will decouple

Top 10 Reasons I think SDN Openflow will gain momentum

[fancy_header3 variation=”slategrey”] Top 10 Reasons I think SDN Openflow will gain momentum [/fancy_header3] [fancy_numbers variation=”slategrey”] Ridiculously high profit margins in the networking hardware market. Content deliverers needing the flexibility that SDN’s claim to deliver in their data centers. To do anything they want with their network traffic, as opposed to trying to orchestrate the ever… Continue reading Top 10 Reasons I think SDN Openflow will gain momentum

The MPLS and transport roles merge

The Juniper PTX in 2011 was a pretty bold merge of the OTN and MPLS functionality into one box.  They are marketing it as the “Converged Supercore” http://www.juniper.net/as/en/dm/supercore/. As the debate of packet vs. circuit switched networks has clearly been won by the packet side of the house. Arguably the the increasing demands of service… Continue reading The MPLS and transport roles merge

Death to the Firewall

[fancy_header3 variation=”slategrey”]Death to the Firewall[/fancy_header3] The Firewall will die soon. Blackbox hardware just doesn’t make sense anymore. CPU is king when it comes to processing payload and that is commodity. SDN will put a nail in the custom hardware closed system soon enough. Until then, some musings on a project to collapse some functions into… Continue reading Death to the Firewall

Nexus 3000

I think Cisco re-branded an Arista switch with Nexus 3000. Low latency financial market oriented with merchant silicon. lolz