Ivan Pepelnjak says that one of the most interesting presentations during Tech Field Day Extra at Cisco Live Berlin was from Paessler. Paessler is developing a little known monitoring software called PRTG which they will offer as a SaaS service running in Amazon cloud. Ivan completely agrees with this decision by Paessler and recommends their cloud service as an alternate network monitoring and management tool.
A look at Paessler PRTG
After seeing their presentation from Tech Field Day Extra at Cisco Live Europe, Jasper Bongertz decided to give Paessler PRTG a an extended look and write up his thoughts. It’s an impressively comprehensive rundown of the solutions monitoring capabilities. He walks through the setup processes, which is notably faster and easier than other open-source alternatives. He really likes how easy it is to setup monitoring sensors, which don’t require any complex configuration. In the end, although PRTG isn’t free like other alternative, the time you save may still make it the better value in the long run.
Programmable ASICs on Software Gone Wild
At Tech Field Day Extra with Cisco Live Europe, Ivan Pepelnjak sat down with Peter Jones, principal engineer at Cisco, for his Software Gone Wild podcast. In their wide-ranging discussion, they talk about why startups fail and NPUs vs ASICs. They then dig into a deeper discussion on the substantive differences and use cases for both. Overall it’s an interesting episode and well worth a listen.
Cisco and Apple Agree: QoS Marking Is an Application Problem
Cisco and Apple announced the first fruits of their partnership at Cisco Live Europe. Ivan Pepelnjak wrote up his thoughts on the announcements. Overall, he was delighted to find that the two companies are letting admins bring QoS to apps on Cisco networks. He runs through some of the potential problems in the solution, but overall finds it well thought out.
Programmable ASICs in Cisco Switches
Jasper Bongertz attended his first Tech Field Day presentation while he was at Cisco Live Europe. At the presentation, he learned about what Cisco is doing with programmable ASICs, including their “Unified Access Data Plane”, which allows for encapsulation or decapsulation of packets dynamically without losing performance. Jasper also liked seeing support for Netflow directly in hardware. He thinks while it’s an important network management tool, its also vital for security considerations. Overall, he thinks Cisco has an interesting approach to making ASICs a little more flexible.
Vault7 Lessons – Zero Trust
Whenever you begin a piece about network trust with a quote from a Nicholas Cage film, you’re doing something right. Justin Cohen uses a quote from Con-Air as a springboard to the benefits of a zero trust network policy. He looks at how increased use of encrypted traffic requires a new methodology to secure networks, as it effectively kills deep packet inspections. Justin looks at solutions from Cisco and Illumio, which can be used as solutions in this new zero trust world.
Cisco Wants You to Use APIs and It Shows
Gabriele Gerbino attended Cisco Live Europe and at a Tech Field Day Extra presentation saw how Cisco is trying to simplify campus networks with Digital Network Architecture. He reviews how Cisco is bringing automation features specific for campus networks to their enterprise switches, and what the practical implications are.
LoRaWAN: Cisco’s Sensor Solution for IoT
Rich Stroffolino looks at some of the interesting ideas coming out of Cisco Live Europe. For their approach to IoT, Cisco is utilizing LoRaWAN, which allows for low power sensors to last up to 10 years on an embedded battery. For systems that only require infrequent send and receive, it’s a compelling idea.
Cisco and Apple Now Support Better Wi-Fi, QoS for Apps
Rich Stroffolino reviews the results of Apple and Cisco partnership after roughly a year. The two major announcement help add QoS to iOS apps, and improving wireless performance. The Fast Lane technology allows administrators to setup whitelists for specific apps. These apps mark outgoing packets with QoS qualifiers that will be recognized on a Cisco network, and otherwise won’t impede performance. Wi-Fi roaming is improved by using native Cisco Access Point intelligence on top of the already supports 802.11k/v protocols. Overall, its a promising initial set of announcements from the collaboration.
Thoughts on Consumer and Industrial IoT
Massimiliano Mortillaro shares some thoughts on the current state of IoT. From the enterprise side, he likes the fact that we’re leaving the pure hype phase of the segment, something that couldn’t be said in 2016. At Cisco Live Europe, he saw some very practical implementations, particularly Cisco’s LoRaWAN technology, which enables devices to operate up to 10 years on an embedded battery. He also considers some of the security and, perhaps most importantly, ecological considerations of the coming age of IoT. It’s a really interesting overview of the space, and will get you thinking about how to prepare for the coming IoT deluge of devices.
Revisiting Cisco HyperFlex, One Year After
Max Mortillaro take a look back on Cisco’s hyperconverged infrastructure solution, HyperFlex, a year later. It’s all the more important to the company, since HPE’s acquisition of SimpliVity. Max got an update at Tech Field Day Extra during Cisco Live Europe last week. Over the year, Max has moved from neutral on it to “neutral+”. Overall, he’d like to see more commitment to their development cycle if this is going to be their sole HCI play going forward. He sees their roadmap as competitive, but they’ll need to tighten up their release cycle to deliver this to their customers on a timely basis. HCI is a crowded space. Cisco’s HyperFlex shows a path to compete with all the big players, but Max thinks they’ll need to consistently deliver on their roadmap.
Cisco DNA Series: DNA Goes Virtual
Cisco updated their DNA strategy, and Justin Cohen has a nice write up of all the implications. For Justin, this is a complete network virtualization in a box solution. Cisco has updated hardware that’s more than capable of doing this, with the released ENCS 5400 Series, which can be a combined ISR and a UCS server. Combined with flexible licensing and deployments, Justin thinks this shift in DNA could really shake things up.
Cisco’s Wireless Partnership With Apple
Ethan Banks got an update from Cisco on their partnership with Apple, previously announced at Cisco Live US 2016. Cisco went into detail about their framework to allow for application prioritization from Apple devices across the network. This is done by a white list, and developers providing QoS marks on specific packets. They also revealed improved roaming support between access points, reducing the time of switching between to from 0.5-0.7 seconds to sub-50ms. Overall, Ethan found these both to be laudable efforts from Cisco.
Caffeine for the Tech Brain: TFDx at CLEUR this Wednesday
Lauren Friedman previews what she’s excited to see at Tech Field Day Extra. She really enjoys the atmosphere of TFD presentations, from the in-depth technical discussions, to the poignant questions from the delegates. We hope she enjoyed the live streams, and remember, we’re posting full videos of the sessions too!
Cisco live! 2017 in Berlin, Germany — I am back again
We can’t wait to see Peter Engelen at Cisco Live Europe for a Tech Field Day Extra event! He’s excited to meet some old colleagues and get to know some delegates for the first time. Check back for live video from the event, with full coverage soon after!
How Tech Field Day influenced me in 2016
Max Mortillaro reflects back on what he’s learned from Tech Field Day events in 2016. It was a really eventful year for him, and he found a lot of value both personally and professionally with the events. Overall, he loves the emersion the event allows. They provide in-depth technical discussions with likeminded colleagues. It’s a community of enterprise IT goodness, and it was a pleasure to have Max at the events.
Tech Field Day Extra at Cisco Live Europe 2017
Tech Field Day is excited to be working in collaboration for an event at Cisco Live Europe, coming up in February in Berlin. Dominik Pickhardt will be joining the other distinguished delegates, and he’s looking forward to all the great presentations and discussions. We can’t wait to see everyone there!
