We all know the Packet Pushers. Recently, I had the pleasure of sitting in on the inagural “Packet Pushers Weekend Edition” - an informal, video round table where we discuss fun and relevant topics in the space of networking and other related IT topics. Much discussion was had on SR-MPLS, Service providers, SD-WAN, and Cloud. I hope to participate again, as I found the experience both entertaining and informative, I hope you will too.

Flow data is a critical piece of understanding how your network works what what it is actively doing. It also provides a great baseline and capacity planning tool. However, some of the more feature rich NetFlow and/or sFlow collectors can be quite daunting in their cost and/or complexity to install. ElastiFlow is a great alternative for flow analytics and is built on the well traveled and robust ElasticStack, meaning, its back end is well documented, well supported, and scales exceptionally…

BGP. It’s that magical protocol that runs the internet. For for as much as BGP is a fundamental, critical, irreplaceable part of the core functioning of the internet, it is a protocol that has not aged well as far as security is concerned. See, BGP was born when the internet was really still an academic experiment. Handshakes and loose agreements were totally fine for connecting a new site. 

It’s kinda like having RouteExplorer and Arbor Peakflow. They have a decent overlap but *just* enough difference to want both

In recent years, the nature of privacy on the internet has become a very important topic amongst those concerned with the now lack of net neutrality. The de-facto mechanism for dealing with privacy has been to “SSL all the things”, which I am very much in favor of. What many do not realize, though, is that simply using SSL for the traffic that transits a given ISP still leaves a wealth of thick, rich, delicious personal data still easily available to your ISP to harvest, sell, and do…

Recently, the venerable Ivan Pepelnjak published a very insightful article about automation becoming such a popular topic that was spawned by an email from one of his readers. I found this article to be spot on, and wanted to add a bit of my own opinion into the automation pie, as I have been spending a lot of time on automation as it related to existing networks as well as into SDN based environments. There is a link, and I wanted to explore it a bit more whilst adding a healthy dose of my…

As a follow up to my last post, I wanted to dive a little deeper into the world of address translation and to suss out some of the more compelling details.

It’s no secret that RF technologies and what like to call “specialty networking” are two of my favorite things in the networking space. Put them together and it is like chocolate and peanut butter! Now, some may not consider Field Area Networking (FAN) to be “unconventional”, but it certainly falls well outside of the space of what is typically traditional enterprise networking. That said, Cisco’s FAN briefing at Network Field Day 17 really got me excited and…

Build vs. buy is an often lamented and always hotly debated question in all aspects of IT, however, if one is able to truly look at all angles the answer is typically straightforward and can be rooted in one simple strategy: don’t reinvent the wheel.

In the tradition of my NIX4NetEng series I’m going to dive deep into the world of strategy, and specifically into the strategy of how we look at and operate our networks, the data they generate and the analytics that are available (and often overlooked) in how networks are managed both long term and day-to-day. So, in the spirit of visibility, lets think about how typical networks are monitored. My guess is that you either already know, or will soon realize that visibility and testing…