Reference Controller 2014 – Configuration Part 1

As a follow up to the original Reference Controller posts, we have been updating our setup to more recent versions of RouteFlow, OpenvSwitch, RYU, etc. Our goal is to have IPv6, OSPF and BGP working across a multi-node setup including 2 Cisco Routers, a Soekris Net5501 running Quagga, and a Vandervecken based OpenFlow 1.3 controller controlling a Pica8 3290 running PicaOS … [Read more...]

Network Virtualization and Cisco’s Hardware Centric View

As VMware pushes NSX into the spotlight, Cisco responds that the network is already utilized. Scrolling through hundreds of post VMworld articles, I ran into one from Embrane showing that network virtualization is still not well understood.  In Embrane's post they referenced a blog post by Padmasree Warrior, CTO of Cisco, about the limitations of a software only approach to d … [Read more...]

The NFV Conundrum – A Migration Path

How to go from a stack of routers, firewalls and load balancers to servers virtualizing those functions. It started decades ago, routers, firewalls, load balancers, etc were and still are computers.  The computers are more specialized, have FPGAs and other specialty hardware, but they are still computers. The reason the network had to move to the current generation of … [Read more...]

Network Operations and Overlay Networks

What Overlay Networks are being sold for today. Overlay Networks are being sold as the solution to scaling issues, be it VLAN, routes, MAC tables or other network limitations.  Overlay Networks are built by using tunneling protocols such as GRE or IPinIP.  The main customers for overlay solutions are those with older equipment that has not been refreshed in the past five or m … [Read more...]

Evaluating Midokura’s MidoNet Solution

This article is the first in a set of articles that will walk through the evaluation of Midokura's MidoNet product.  In the first article we will discuss Midokura's solution, what it is made of, how it works and what expectations have been set with regard to performance and the solution it aims to solve. An Overview of Midokura: SDN Startup Midokura launched this week at th … [Read more...]

The Vyatta Cloud Router Story

Vyatta and their approach to Cloud Routers A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of speaking with Scott Sneddon, Cloud Solutions Architect at Vyatta Inc.  I've known Scott since the late 1990's when he and I both worked for Exodus Communications. Vyatta is one of the few full featured software based routing vendors in the market today.  Their product is a mix of OpenSource and … [Read more...]

The Virtual Data Center Reality

Virtual Data Centers start to become reality. With the recent announcement of the CSR 1000v from Cisco, there are now two commercial Virtual Data Center stories (three if we look at the VMWare vCNS products and use one of the other vendors products for a router) Cisco and Vyatta. What is a Virtual Data Center?  There will be a lot of different answers but in my view it co … [Read more...]