In the third part of our “Modern DC” webinar series we focus on connectivity with resources located beyond the local data center, somewhere in the Internet. This includes extending Layer 2 and Layer 3 tunnels to public clouds (such as AWS, Azure and GCP), branch offices, Edge Computing servers and IoT devices based on single-board computers. As we explain in the webinar, five mechanisms are required to make all this possible: routing between overlay networks forwarding traffic between the overlay and underlay networks extending VXLAN tunnels over the Internet encrypting traffic forwarded over ..read more

May you live in interesting times—this well-known curse of probably Chinese origins can be applied to the pandemic era we are living through in 2020. Yet COVID-19 may also be a blessing of sorts, albeit one very much in disguise: it is likely to speed up the adoption of modern networking technology that will help companies be more flexible and secure in the midst of so much turmoil.   Internet traffic is increasing As the COVID-19 pandemic was spreading globally and forcing governments to introduce hard lockdowns, people became more online-dependent —for work, school, communication and en ..read more

While developing projects on the Kubernetes platform I came across an interesting problem. I had quite a few scripts that ran in containers and needed to be triggered only once on every node in my Kubernetes cluster. This could not be solved using default Kubernetes resources such as DaemonSet and Job. So I decided to write my own resource using Kubernetes Operator Framework. How I went about it is the subject of this blog post. When I confronted this problem, my first thought was to use a DaemonSet resource that utilizes initContainers and then starts a dummy busybox container running tail -f ..read more

The growing complexity of network environments poses great challenges to effective network monitoring. This should come as no surprise: such environments can include bare metals (on-prem solutions), data centers, private and public clouds. Additionally, automation, orchestration and SDNs can greatly enhance your network management, but at the same time add yet another level of complexity. In this blog post, we will discuss the main challenges related to monitoring and how to solve them to streamline the entire monitoring process.   Network monitoring, like monitoring in general, is a broa ..read more

The traditional NIC (Network Interface Card) is a relatively simple device equipped with Ethernet interface(s) and used to enable connectivity between machines. SmartNICs, by contrast, offer much more sophisticated capabilities and allow you to perform advanced operations on packets. SmartNICs are thus perfectly suited to optimize network performance in a data center, especially those that are programmable and offer the computing resources required. Consider the example of VNF (Virtual Network Function) offloading. The idea is to execute common network functions—a firewall, a NAT or a load bal ..read more

This video is a part of our series “The modern, interoperable DC”, which walks you through connectivity between different types of resources. In Part 1 we guided you through a solution for DC connectivity based on a combination of FRR, Unnumbered BGP (IPv4 with IPv6 link-local NH) and eBPF. Now it’s time for Part 2!  In this video we will continue to enhance our DC with additional features made possible by open standards. We will show how to leverage a BGP router running on servers to provide layer 2 connectivity between heterogeneous resources, such as virtual machines, containers and b ..read more

This video is a part of our webinar series “The modern, interoperable DC”, which walks you through connectivity challenges between different types of resources. Part 1: >>Solving “last mile” problems with BGP<< will guide you through a solution for DC connectivity based on a combination of FRR, unnumbered BGP (IPv4 with IPv6 link-local NH) and eBPF. This mix produces an automated discovery of bare metal and XaaS environments and can be run on any COTS as it uses only open-source and standardized features. In this video we explain: The evolution of the data center and its impact on ..read more

SDN is definitely a buzzword in the networking world. Software-defined networks  are now gaining momentum among enterprises. But is this a truly disruptive technology that is going to replace legacy networks? Or is it a logical step forward in the evolution of the network? In this blog post I will discuss these questions.   SDN for enhancing legacy networks As I see it, SDN is an evolutionary step for networks, not a revolution. Considering the benefits SDN technology offers or even starting to adopt it does not mean sweeping aside the traditional network as we know it. SDNs are not ..read more

Software-defined WAN is becoming increasingly popular, and for good reason—it effectively solves a number of important challenges posed by traditional WAN architecture. Reduced costs, increased application performance, more flexible network topology, faster deployment and improved security are the main benefits SD-WAN offers. Read on to learn more.   What is a WAN and why do you need it?  A WAN, or Wide Area Network, is the computer network spanning a wide geographical area (regions, countries or even world). You need a WAN when you have a number of geographically distributed local n ..read more

Cloud offers considerable benefits to businesses. Yet in some cases where low latency is critical, it has serious drawbacks. An emerging paradigm of edge computing is the answer to these problems.   Why has edge computing become so popular? In 2016, Cisco announced the beginning of the Zettabyte Era. Since then, the amount of data produced and processed has increased zettafold, if you will. This is especially true when you look at M2M applications (machine-to-machine or more commonly referred to as Internet of Things—IoT) such as video surveillance, healthcare monitoring, the smart home ..read more