When NEC began talking about SDN at Network Field Day 9, I was not sure what to expect. I knew they had been heavily involved with openflow since the early days, and many years ago I was able to get my hands on their early OpenFlow controller and was immediately frustrated by its cryptic nature and frankly, poor documentation. Their switches were fine and were heavily utilized in early OpenFlow deployments. I knew they had decent support and were squarely on board the SDN train. Their…

In a few weeks I’ll have the opportunity to participate in another Network Field Day. I’ve been lucky enough to have the opportunity to attend in the past and have done some remote participation when possible, but like some of the other rare opportunities I have had in my career, NFD is fairly unique in that it is constantly evolving in both the information provided and the individuals involved. As the saying goes, variety is the spice of life. I’m particularly excited about…

I have a love-hate feeling about “predictions” about the upcoming year, especially tech predictions.  I don’t like media sensationalism of any kind, and a lot of the tech predctions are just that, sensational, extreme talk to draw in readers or viewers.  I’m choosing to go down a more subtle path, these are things I’ve thought about lately but will likely forget in the upcoming year, unless they actually happen, in which case I’d likely do an “ah, I…