Forward Networks came out of stealth a Networking Field Day a few years ago, and it’s always great to have them come back as a presenter. During their most recent presentation, they were subject to some tough question. In this post, they discuss how they answered them, and how the company has proved it can perform at scale.
Bringing a Butter Knife to a Screwdriver Party: Three Network Automation Tools From NFD21…Just for Fun.
At our recently Networking Field Day, Micheline Murphy got to hear from three different companies with different approaches to network automation. In this post, she breaks down what she heard from Forward Networks, Aruba Networks, and NetworkToCode.
My Thoughts on Networking Field Day 21
A.J. Murray got to experience the super sized event that was Networking Field Day. This saw an incredible array of companies presenting to our delegates over the course of four days. In this post, he shares his thoughts about each of the presentations. Remember, if you’ve ever wondered how you can become a delegate, we have a sign-up form right on the website. Join us at our next event!
NFD21 Delegate!
Remington Loose was a first time delegate at Networking Field Day. While it can be a little intimidating to drink from the IT fire hose at such an event, Remington definitely did his homework. He profiles the presenting companies in this piece and what he expected to see from each. Now that the event is over, we can’t wait to hear what he thought of the presentations.
A Day in the Life of a Packet
Al Rasheed is back with another excellent write up from a Field Day presentation, this time focusing on what he saw from Forward Networks at Tech Field Day Extra at Cisco Live Europe this year. The intent-based networking company focused on their Forward Enterprise tier on the presentation, showing use cases for Application Team Self-Service and Change Window Assistance. Al was really impressed by how well prepared the presenters are, and agrees with Ivan Pepelnjak that the presentation was “awesome”.
Forward Networks: Bringing Sanity to a Network Near You
Max Mortillaro isn’t exactly a networking guy, so it takes a lot for him to have a “wow” moment when hearing from them. That’s just what he got from Forward Networks during their presentation at Tech Field Day Extra at Cisco Live Europe 2019. They showed off their Enterprise offering, which builds on a free mapping tier and adds Verification, Prediction, Comparison and Integration features. You’ll have to check out their presentation for all the details, but Max found it very impressive.
Tech Field Day Extra @ CLEUR19 Recap
Cisco Live Europe is an event big enough that it’s tough to encapsulate in any one post. That’s why it’s great to have smaller, more focused looks, especially when it comes from Ivan Pepelnjak. He wrote up a posting looking at what he saw from Tech Field Day Extra at Cisco Live Europe. Cisco touched on automating Meraki deployments, new AWS-focus Cisco ACI features, HyperFlex updates, and more. Be sure to read Ivan’s thoughts on what he saw, and watch the presentation video for yourself.
Automated Testing & Intent Verification for Network Operations
Jason Edelman considers why networks often lack the robust testing tools that are the bedrock of software development. He recently saw a solution from Veriflow at Networking Field Day that might move networking closer to having better preemptive testing. They offer built in consistency and intent-based checks to define the state of the network and when something appears out of compliance. He also likes that their platform exposes all of this functionality via a RESTful API.
Assuring your network will do what you think it…
Tim Miller wrote up his thoughts on what he saw from Forward Networks at Networking Field Day last year. Their solution is billed for providing network assurance, which they break down into correctness and performance. Their presentation focused on correctness, which they use sophisticated modeling to formally verify. Tim reviews the implications of their Forward Platform in terms of business intent, highlights their strong search functionality, and predication engine.
Forward Networks – A forward approach to formal verification
Tony Mattke reviews what he saw from Forward Networks at Networking Field Day in November. It’s been a little bit since their presentation, but Tony is still excited when thinking about the implications of formally verifying a network. He wants to see it in testing in the real world before passing final judgement, but the capabilities as described at NFD “should be making you drool”.
NFD13: Forward Networks Comes Out of Stealth to Impress
Peter Welcher reviews what he saw from Forward Networks once they came out of stealth. Peter seemed impressed with how Forward is able to put together a database model of network configurations that can be searched and indexed independent of actually operating on the network. This can then be used for fast troubleshooting, as well as testing configurations to make sure they’re operating within a desired state. Overall, Peter sees this as a way to not spread you senior enterprise talent too thin. While there isn’t any automated remediation backed in, the powerful forecasting tools they present make it possible to better utilize talent in your organization.
Forward Thinkers, Forward Networks
Rob Coote shares his impressions from what he saw with Forward Networks at Networking Field Day last month. He really highlights how Forward’s software modeling of network performance could impact, not just the performance of the network, but the worth routines of network engineers. By effectively giving you a network lab to tinker with in software, their solution theoretically eliminates the “wait-and-see” approach to changes in a network. Rob really hopes they are able to move their solution beyond just monitoring to remediation. But he makes a really great point on the very human impact Forward Networks could have.
The Quest for Verification with Forward Networks
Forward Networks gave a presentation fresh out of stealth mode at Networking Field Day, and it certainly made an impression with Rich Stroffolino. He outlines how the company is doing their network monitoring. They model all possible places a packet can go on a network in a constantly updating software model. This allows you to not only react when problems occur, but also for better planning and provisioning, since you can model traffic very accurately in the software model. We’ll wait to see how their solution gets deployed in an actual enterprise, but on a theoretical level it’s fascinating.
Forward Networks – go ahead, break it
Amy Arnold laments the plight of the network engineer. The agonize over network design, try to come up with every conceivable failover scenario, and then deal with the consequences. Some have the aid of a lab to help test their configuration, most don’t. That’s why what Forward Networks presented at Networking Field Day was so interesting. It allows for you to model over your network in software, and then break it in every conceivable way. Forward’s model shows every a packet can possibly go, allowing the engineer to see exactly how a scenario will play out. She was justifiably concerned about how their product will be priced going forward, but otherwise it seems like a valuable tool in the engineer’s arsenal.
State of the Industry: Network Analytics
Gestalt IT just debuted a new feature, a weekly State of the Industry post. For their first week, they’re looking at the state of network analytics. They take a look at two competing methodologies to the problem. The first is SolarWinds NetPath tool, which sits in the network. The SolarWinds approach seems to take the ideas behind existing tools, and looks to perfect them. The other method is Forward Networks, which is presenting a top-down approach to do live mapping purely in software. Both are interesting, and point to further investment and development in the space going into 2017.
Forward Networks – Extraordinary Stuff!
Before November’s Networking Field Day, I was trying to find out anything I could about Forward Networks. They were in stealth until the week of the event, but I still thought I could find a few leaks or details about what they were up to, other than that they were a networking startup. Sadly, my Google-fu failed me, leaving me a blank slate for their presentation. As a delegate at the event, David Varnum was in much the same boat. To say he came away excited is an understatement. What Forward Networks does is make a complete and constantly updating model of your network. They do this by mathematically predicting every single location a packet can travel within a given network configuration. David goes into full details about why this is amazing, but the Forward Networks elevator pitch is pretty good: They’re doing for network mapping what Google did to web indexes.
Networking Field Day 13 – Sneak Preview
Tony Mattke wrote a nice preview of Networking Field Day, held just last week in Silicon Valley. He runs through all of the presenting companies, and tells us what he was looking forward to seeing. Give it a read to whet your appetite, then check out all of the video coverage here!
Looking forward to Networking Field Day
Scott McDermott is coming back for Networking Field Day and gives an overview of all the companies presenting at this event. Most exciting is a recent update to his post, Forward Networks just came out of Stealth Mode on November 14th, and they’ll be giving a highly anticipated presentation on the November 17th! Check out Scott’s post for what he’s looking for out of each of the presenting companies, and make sure you check back on the 17th and 18th for all the live stream action!
Forward Networks
Forward Enterprise documents, searches, verifies, and predicts the behavior of your network by creating an always-accurate software copy of your entire network infrastructure using a unique mathematical model. With available REST APIs, it easily integrates into your existing network management workflow and tools. The In-App Network Query Engine (NQE) Checks feature delivers the ability to […]
