Packet Pushers Podcast

In this show recorded at Cisco Live US 2012, we put mics in the middle of a big table and had a Cisco certification roundtable chat. These folks, probably all well-known to the Packet Pushers audience, offered up program updates as well as real-world advice that will help IT professionals working on certifications. Oh, and we had a lot of laughs along the way - hope you don't mind. ;-) Amy Arnold Ethan Banks Greg Ferro Tom Hollingsworth Scott Morris Wendell Odom Natalie Timms Russ White We  focus on the recent CCIE Security 4.0 track announcement, updates to the CCDE program, study strategies, the true benefits of IT certifications, and what the changing networking landscape means to folks who are just getting started in their networking careers. All in all, this is a fun show with practical value, some humor, and great perspective brought to the table by folks with many years of experience working in and contributing to the networking community.

This podcast discusses the latest announcements at Cisco Live on the Nexus 1000V with Han Yang from including the following: expanded support for Open Source Hypervisors, including Citrix XEN, KVM and others coming the in next few months. REST APIs for programmable networking VXLAN termination capabilities for bridging between virtual and physical VLANs in the data centre. OpenStack integration. Service chaining with vWAAS, vASA, vGW etc. Show Notes Cisco Nexus 1000V home page - http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps9902/index.html About Han Yang Han is the Nexus 1000V Product Line Manager at Cisco who has been working on the Nexus 1000V since its early prototype stage. Prior to joining Cisco, Han was working on client hypervisors at Phoenix Technologies. Han has electrical engineering degrees from Virginia Tech, Cornell University, and Stanford University. Disclosure Packet Pushers was commissioned by Cisco Data Centre and Virtualisation Business Unit to attend Cisco Live 2012 and discuss Cisco's Software Defined Networking launch as a sponsored service. We have covered the event by recording several shows, attended briefings and more. Thanks to Cisco for sponsoring us and helping us to record and publish the content.

Gerald Coombs is Wireshark. From the original project that started over 15 years ago as Ethereal, Gerald has been leading the development of the Open Source packet sniffer that has become the standard tool for all network engineers.

Ron Fuller, CCIE, CiscoPress author, tweeter, blogger, and Technical Marketing Engineer at Cisco, talked to Ethan Banks and Greg Ferro about announcements made at Cisco Live US 2012 related to the Cisco Nexus product line. What We Discuss Supervisor 2 & 2E bring more control-plane power to the Nexus 7000 series. More VDCs, including a special admin VDC. VDC CPU shares have also arrived, which allows a policy to define which VDC gets access to the CPU in the event of CPU congestion. What's the process to upgrade from a Supervisor 1 to a 2 or 2E? It's a disruptive process, but there's a migration guide to be available soon. The importance of blessing a new Nexus 7000 installation with unicorn tears. There's additional FEX density with Supervisor 2 & 2E: 45 today up from 32, and there's more on the roadmap. 7K cards that support FEX are the M1-32, M2-24, and F2-series. FEX density for 5500s with the L3 engine has been increased from 8 to 16. The new 7U Nexus 7004, aimed at shops with limited budgets and at sites with limited space and power. The 7004 has no fabric modules. On other 7000 chassis, there's a 3-stage crossbar fabric: ingress fabric, crosswire fabric, and egress fabric. On the 7004, there's only 2 slots for data forwarding line cards, as the other 2 slots are for sup engines, so the two slots end up wired back-to-back. This results in 440Gbps of bandwidth per slot, down from 550 as compared to other chassis fully loaded with fabric modules. This only impacts the 48 port F2 cards, where you'd have a very slight over subscription - 440Gbps available vs. 480Gbps the F2 is capable of...1.09:1. Wild rumor - stay tuned for virtualized NX-OS. NX-OS 6.1 release notes. Additional hardware support for new sup modules. IP SLA - ability for the Nexus 7000 to take part in the SLA path and probing. Ability to do sampled netflow in F2 - no F2 netflow statistics today, as it's not in the silicon of that linecard. Nexus service modules - ASA, ACE, and NAM are coming. If the Nexus gets service modules, is there any reason to keep the Catalyst 6500 alive? Launched at CLUS 2012 - 10G module of the M2 line card. Added FEX support into the M2 line. What's the customer adoption rate been for FabricPath? What's the difference between FabricPath and TRILL, and where are the TRILL standards heading? Links Cisco Nexus Landing Page Cisco FabricPath Landing Page Cisco Fabric Extender Technology Landing Page Cisco Nexus Supervisor Engines Data Sheet Cisco Nexus 7000 - Technical Overview of Virtual Device Contexts (white paper) Cisco NX-OS Release Notes Jump Page Disclosure Packet Pushers was commissioned by Cisco Data Centre and Virtualisation Business Unit to attend Cisco Live 2012 and discuss Cisco's Software Defined Networking launch as a sponsored service. We have covered the event by recording several shows, attended briefings and more. Thanks to Cisco for sponsoring us and helping us to record and publish the content. Audio Notes On this recording, the headset audio feed was a fail, so we're using the audio feed from the backup mic. We apologize in advance for background noise and mouse clicks you will notice from time to time.

Sometimes you would think that Campus LANs don't actually exist. In this podcast, we are looking at the Catalyst 4500X product with a team from Cisco. Greg specifically requested to discuss this product to cover products that are used often, but not necessarily so "cool" or fashionable ( thanks to listeners who asked!).

Richard Pruss, a Principal Engineer in NSSTG Architecture Group of the Cisco Network Software Services Technology Group, joins Derick Winkworth, Greg Ferro and Ethan Banks in a discussion about Cisco's onePK API strategy to enable SDN and network programmability. What We Discuss What is onePK? What's different about onePK versus SNMP? How is onePK impacted by non-modular IOS? On what platforms can you run onePK applications? How many APIs are being released, and in what categories? How did Cisco determine what IOS features to expose first? onePK lets your application act like a peer routing protocol. How's that work? What's the role of security in onePK? How is onePK similar to and different from OpenFlow? What programming languages have access to the onePK libraries today, and which ones are next? Links Cisco onePK Landing Page onePK – Building Applications and Agents on API’s Across Cisco’s Network OS’s (by Richard Pruss) Disclosure Packet Pushers was commissioned by Cisco Data Centre and Virtualisation Business Unit to attend Cisco Live 2012 and discuss Cisco's Software Defined Networking launch as a sponsored service. We have covered the event by recording several shows, attended briefings and more. Thanks to Cisco for sponsoring us and helping us to record and publish the content. Audio Notes At the Cisco Live 2012 show, the Packet Pushers did 2 simultaneous recordings of each show. The primary recording was done with headsets. The secondary was a "backup" using a single mic placed in the center of the conference table. In this recording, the last 3+ minutes of audio are from the backup mic.

During Cisco Live 2012, the Cloud Services Router was announced by Cisco. We we able to convince Prashanth Shenoy, Product Manager to come and talk about what we know so far.

As part of the Packet Pushers Cisco Live 2012 Tour, we sat down with Omar Sultan to provide an overview of Cisco's SDN Strategy. Ethan & Greg are joined by Derick Winkworth to talk about what Software Defined Networking means to us as Network Engineers. Cisco's SDN strategy is a complex, multi-level approach to addressing the SDN Challenge. It's not just about OpenFlow, or controller based networking. We have a number of shows where we investigate the many aspects of this SDN approach but this is an overview of how SDN will affect our designs and work lives. Is this a response to the popular concept of minimalist and low cost networking, or does Cisco's approach focus on the diversity of customers that have different needs. You could be cynical and point out that Cisco is vested in maintaining it's existing portfolio of products with complex software or you could consider the alternate view and regard these as service that Cisco can offer via an API to software controller. So, not so much technical, but coverage of a complex topic that we will be arguing about for months to come. Show Notes Cisco Open Network Environment, Explained - blog post by Omar introducing the One Network Environment Dericks overview of what SDN means to him IT Is Dead. All Hail Systems Engineering! Greg wrote last week about Networking Vendors Should Step Up With an SDN Strategy - Cisco has brought their SDN plans to the table and are attempting, at least, to spell out all the parts that are needed. Dave Ward from Cisco - Is it Just Software Defined Networks (SDN)? - although Dave has a Service Provider focus there is  lot of good information in here. Disclosure Packet Pushers was commissioned by Cisco Data Centre and Virtualisation Business Unit to attend Cisco Live 2012 and discuss Cisco's Software Defined Networking launch as a sponsored service. We have covered the event by recording several shows, attended briefings and more.

Host Tony Bourke talks with Ron Fuller and Peter Revill about the latest CCIE certification from Cisco, the CCIE Data Center

In this show, Ethan Banks is joined by Tony Mattke, Chris Marget, and Jeff Fry to kick off a deep-dive series about the Cisco Nexus product line. Nexus gear is making frequent appearances in Cisco shops these days, as enterprises and service providers refresh their aging Catalyst hardware. The Nexus line keeps growing and changing both in hardware and capability, so we're taking a look at what's going on under the covers, telling the story from our own personal Nexus experience. This first installment is a buyer's guide. We run through all the major Nexus products, and talk through speeds and feeds, power considerations, line card capabilities, costs, market positioning, product licensing, and even touch on the management software. Links Cisco's Nexus Jump Page

This is Packet Pushers Priority Queue - a Special Features podcast where the Packet Pushers take our hardest of hard core, industry event coverage, nichest of niche, and most specific of special content and create whole new category of networking podcast.

Once again we are talking about the Internet and moves that are underway in the Routing Internet Registries to add more security to BGP routing that underpins that Internet. This is known as BGP Origin Validation using RPKI.

Greg Ferro & Ethan Banks conclude their chat begun in Show 103 - Choking on Cookies, but take the conversation in a different direction. What We Discuss TRILL & SPB - are they competing or complimentary? Or aimed at different markets? If SDN really gets a strong foothold in the marketplace because of excellent applications, what might that mean for TRILL and SPB? What has Google *really* demonstrated with their OpenFlow announcement? And what does that mean for the rest of us? If you buy an SDN-based "network-in-a-box" that's a proprietary vendor solution, what happens to your skill set? SDN is early right now. Can we tell where it's going to take the industry? A useful application for SDN: end-to-end flow analysis (instead of point-in-time flow analysis). TRILL would pick up steam if Cisco reduced the prohibitive cost of licensing FabricPath. Links Show 44 - The Case For Shortest Path Briding Fake Name Generator

Podcast hosts Ethan Banks & Greg Ferro have a good old-fashioned chinwag about things that are on their minds in this, the first of a two-part podcast. Part two should be published later during the week of 20-May-2012 as Show 104. Stay tuned! What We Discuss Long-term goals for the Packet Pushers Podcast. How you can stay in touch with the show these days. How we usually record & produce the show. We talk about Cisco: issues of vendor trust, resellers, licensing, and overlapping product choices. The advantages of buying an integrated solution like vBlock. How companies gather information through your browser and use it to build a very personal profile about YOU. Links Ethan's article on Cisco, trust, and brand inertia. Cookie Monster - a manager for the cookies created by the most usual Windows browsers: Internet Explorer, Firefox, Google Chrome, Mozilla and Opera (only basic support for this one). Ghostery - a browser tool available for Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera and Internet Explorer. It scans the page for scripts, pixels, and other elements and notifies the user of the companies whose code is present on the page.

Greg Ferro and Ethan Banks dive into a deep, dark hole of nerdery with Ivan Pepelnjak, Marko Milivojevic, and Petr Lapukov to see if we can decide whether or not MPLS is tunneling. We plumb the depths of packet and frame formatting, compare and contrast various technologies, toss different scenarios around, contradict one another, and throw buckets of cold water all over the place. In the end, we think we have an answer. So put the kids to bed, cram in your earbuds, and visualize the virtual whiteboard. Close your eyes...focus...there it is! All that's missing is the smell of dry erase markers. What We Talk About In the witty opening banter, we find out Greg is an Interop judge, Petr works on something called "Bing", and Marko is teaching the first CCIE ever a thing or two. Oh, and who WAS the first CCIE anyway? Hint - not our friend Terry. Not quite. From here, the show gets serious, and includes the following topics: Foundations: circuits vs. connections vs connectionless. How is a tunnel different from a virtual circuit? How do we say that a circuit has "state"? We could think of a tunnel as "a layer of forwarding indirection". The tricky business of distinguishing between the OSI model (classical layering) vs. what we normally consider tunnels. Now wait a minute...could MPLS be considered NAT in a certain sense? So...maybe a tunnel is tunnel when you see the same protocol twice in the header. Redefining a tunnel as "a layer of frozen interaction". MPLS is not exactly L2 or L3. It's a total layering violation. How do CRC checks impact our definition of tunneling? Isn't it time for a new networking model? Once we've hammered through all of that, we loop back around to review why we had the chat. The question comes back up - why are we reinventing the wheel in data center networking? Couldn't an MPLS application be written to do many of the same things the explosion of overlay protocols are doing? Or would we have scalability problems?