Assembly Required: A Basic Spanning-Tree Design for a Two-Tier Data Center
Introduction In taking over a network that someone else built, I have had the chance to review the topology through my own peculiar lens, considering what I will do differently. Some discoveries have...
View ArticleTraveling East-West Might Get a Little Easier: Highlights From the TRILL RFC5556
The Problem TRILL Aims to Solve TRILL – TRansparent Interconnection of Lots of Links – is proposed with no technical implementation details in RFC5556. TRILL’s proposal can be encapsulated thusly:...
View ArticleJuniper QFabric: Enabling the Exponential Data Center? Or Just a Faster...
What Is QFabric? Juniper, one of several networking vendors cutting into Cisco’s data center market share, is marketing their new QFabric as a data center fabric that can scale with exponential growth...
View ArticleShow 50 – Collapsing Layers
This show was recorded Thursday, 6/23/2011. Greg was away at Glastonbury, so joining Ethan on the mic are Kurt Bales, Jeff Fry, and Mrs. Y for a design-oriented discussion revolving around the emerging...
View ArticleCisco Catalyst 3560-X + 3750-X StackPower Overview
In the current Cisco Catalyst 3750-X switch pair I have sitting on my desk, I have taken advantage of the new StackPower feature. StackPower creates a power backplane among the switches in your stack,...
View ArticleShow 64 – Catalyst 6500 Supervisor 2T Deep Dive With Cisco TME’s Patrick...
In this sponsored show, Cisco Technical Marketing Engineers Patrick Warichet and Scott Hodgdon join Greg Ferro and Ethan Banks to chat about the recently announced Cisco Catalyst 6500 Supervisor 2T in...
View ArticleShow 88 – Server Internals and Network Performance
Having met at VMworld 2010, Daniel Bowers and I were having an ongoing discussion around server architectures and how they impact network performance. I convinced him to come onto the show and talk...
View ArticleThin Slicing a Black Swan: The Search for the Unknown Unknowns
Over the last two weeks I’ve had an ongoing conversation with Derick Winkworth regarding the colossal (and largely unmanageable) amount of data gathered in information security. I even brazenly...
View ArticleShow 101 – Brocade Virtual Symposium Part 1 – Sponsored
Introducing the Brocade Virtual Symposium. In a special video session, we brought Chip Copper from Brocade into a room to talk about four key areas of Brocade’s Ethernet Fabric. The first episode is...
View ArticleWhen Is a Firewall Like a Speed Bump?
The other day the Director of Engineering at my new job asked me why we install firewalls. He admitted that he already had an answer, but that he wanted me to document it for all the network engineers...
View ArticlePwn Your Own Network
I’ll admit it. Part of the reason I’m in IT is for the toys. Before Daniel Craig (yum) took over, I think the only interesting part of a James Bond movie was the compulsory scene in which Q...
View ArticleArguing With Reality
I haven’t posted much lately, because I’ve been caught in the gravitational pull of a “black hole” initiative at my new job. You know what I mean, a project that never seems to finish, sucking in...
View ArticlePQ Show 007 – Cisco Nexus Deep Dive Part 2 – Virtual Port-Channel
Tony Mattke, Chris Marget, and Jeff Fry join Ethan Banks for a discussion about deploying virtual port-channel technology with the Cisco Nexus 5K and 7K series of switches in this continuation of the...
View ArticleRevenge of the TOE
Recently a colleague and I encountered a very perplexing issue with one of our ASAs. Our team had reports of users experiencing random timeouts to a web server and the problem was “hot potato’d” around...
View ArticleHealthy Paranoia Show 4:IPv6 Security Smackdown!
Join Healthy Paranoia for The Matchup of the Century: The IPv6 Security Smackdown! Where builders and breakers wrestle with some of the most difficult security challenges surrounding the protocol. We...
View ArticlePractical Visibility Fabric – Part 1
Men have become the tools of their tools. - Henry David Thoreau This will be a three part series. This first article will involve an introduction to the subject, the general techniques involved and...
View ArticleHealthy Paranoia Show 6: Once Upon a Time, There Was Virtualization…
Yes boys and girls, today we tell a story of clouds. The Packetpushers attack the subject of virtualization security. You’ll hear Greg Ferro and Ivan Pepelnjak* wax eloquent about unicorns and an...
View ArticlePQ Show 021 – Cisco Data Center Certs With Tony Bourke
Ethan Banks and Tony Bourke discuss the Cisco Data Center certifications, focusing on the CCNA & CCNP tracks. We take a look at what the tracks cover, who the right candidates are for these tracks,...
View ArticleShow 135 – Change Control Causes Constipation
Ethan & Greg discuss events of the previous week or two and some of the things that have happened. Closely looking the Cisco's announcements of ONE Controller, Nexus 6000 and virtual networking...
View Article2e2: The Hindenburg of Cloud Providers & What It Means for Outsourcing
I have a somewhat love/hate relationship with cloud services and outsource providers. In my day job, we provide a few cloud services, resell a couple more, and use a handful to support some backoffice...
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