Terry Slattery pays close attention to network management products, and had the chance to see three companies present on them at Networking Field Day earlier this year. As a delegate, Terry got to see VMware, PathSolutions, and Kemp present their products and writes about them on his blog: No Jitter. Head over to his blog to see his thoughts which include some throwbacks to Networking Field Day 16 and Networking Field Day 20!
Streaming Telemetry With Avi Freedman on Software Gone Wild
Ivan Pepelnjak was a delegate at Networking Field Day in September 2017 and was impressed with the presentations from Kentik’s CEO and Co-founder, Avi Freedman. Ivan, his colleagues, and Avi Freedman discussed streaming telemetry on the podcast, Software Gone Wild. Check out this episode to hear what they had to say!
Why Have I Joined Apstra?
One of former Networking Field Day delegates, Jeff Tantsura, recently became the Head of Networking Strategy for Apstra. Jeff got a technical deep dive on the company at Networking Field Day last year, where he was immediatelty struck by the massively scalable and distributed design of their platform. In the end, the company had exciting technology and just the right people for Jeff to accept the role.
GraphDBs and Network Automation
In this post Nicola Arnoldi clears up some confusion. For him, when network automation is vital for any organization, it’s important to keep in context what things like Ansible are. This isn’t SDN or an orchestration framework. Instead, taking a cue from Ansible’s recent Networking Field Day presentation, this is just one tool to accomplish automation. These kind of tool are perfect for building a Graph DB of your network resources. This is what underlies Apstra’s intent-based networking, as demoed at Networking Field Day last year.
The Road To 400G Ethernet Is Paved With Bechtolsheim’s Intentions
Andy Bechtolsheim is no stranger to anyone familiar with IT networking infrastructure co-founding Sun Microsystems and Arista Networks among many other ventures. In this piece, Timothy Morgan looks at a recent Tech Field Day presentation by him with a roadmap to 400 Gb/sec Ethernet switching in the datacenter.
Tech Field Day 2017: An Enthusiastic Retrospective
When Nikki Schnupp joined the Tech Field Day team, she was greeted with two events back to back within a week of starting. Much like a delegate at the event, she drank from the IT firehose, learning about the personalities and technology as presented. It was a singular experience. Make sure to check out her entire look back in this piece.
Gigamon (and Splunk and Phantom) at NFD16
In this piece, Terry Slattery shares his thoughts on what he saw from Gigamon at Networking Field Day this past November. The company presented with partners Splunk and Phantom, and showcased how their traditional packet broker and visibility products can be used for overall network security. Terry thought their central premise of the impossibility of total intrusion prevention was reasonable. Instead the company’s Defender Lifecycle Model showcases how the company is working with partners to use big data and machine learning to make the most of the packet information collected.
Apstra at NFD16
Terry Slattery got a look at Apstra at Networking Field Day last year. He was impressed by the potential of their Apstra Operating System for intent-based networking. Now the company has announced support not just for more modern leaf-spine architectures, but for VXLAN overlays as well. He looks forward to the day when he can use AOS in a real network deployment.
Spotlight on Cisco Tetration and Cisco Intersight at NFD16
At the last Networking Field Day event, Pete Welcher and the rest of the delegates got to hear from Cisco. They presented on the latest updates on Tetration, as well as debutted Intersight, formerly known as Project Starship. In this post, Pete liked the updates he saw from Tetration, particular the emphasis on using it as a tool for security alerts and mitigation. As far as Intersight, Pete liked Cisco’s emphasis on platform security, but thinks the company will need to work for a while to earn customer trust of its management-as-a-service model.
Going Faster with 400Gbps Ethernet and Andy Bechtolsheim
How will we get to the 400Gbps Ethernet future? Tom Hollingsworth heard a talk from Arista Networks’ Andy Bechtolsheim at Networking Field Day on the topic. The talk delved into the challenges, politics, and opportunities of 400Gbps.
NFD16: Automating Arista Networks
Pete Welcher shares his thoughts on Arista’s Networking Field Day appearance from last year. He reviews the company’s presentations on streaming telemetry, extensive programmability, and changes in routing architecture.
Keep Load Balanced With KEMP Technologies
Pete Welcher wasn’t familiar with KEMP Technologies prior to their presentation at Networking Field Day earlier this year. But after hearing their presentation, he found them to have some interesting ideas with an impressive portfolio of server load balancer solutions. He summerizes some of the notable features, and how using their SLB might provide a more consistent experience with hybrid deployments.
Arista Networks at Networking Field Day 16
Arista presented at Networking Field Day earlier this year. We were fortunate enough to have Terry Slattery in attendance as a delegate. In this piece, Terry shares his thoughts on the presentation. Arista CDO and Chairman Andy Bechtolsheim shared his thoughts on how the industry will get to 400G Ethernet. CTO Ken Duda reviewed how customers could run their own software on Arista switches using stock Linux. Finally software engineer Ryan Madsen reviewed the company’s monitoring and streaming analytics capability. Make sure to check out their full presentation video to get the details!
Veriflow at NFD16: Continuous Network Verification
Veriflow presented at Networking Field Day earlier this year, demonstrating their formal verification of enterprise networks. Pete Welcher considers how this enables for continuous checking of network state, and enables intent-based features for network engineers.
Pluribus Networks… 2 Years Later
Pluribus Networks was a returning presenter for Ivan Pepelnjak, who first saw them at Networking Field Day in 2015. Overall this was the company’s fourth Networking Field Day presentation. Make sure to check out our full video coverage from their most recent appearance!
Pluribus Networks at NFD16
Pete Welcher wrote up his post to wrap his mind around where Pluribus Networks falls in the fabric management market. The company differentiates itself with a controller-less design running their Netvisor OS on whitebox switches. Pete liked their framework of managing a fabric as one large switch, rather than many individual devices.
Pluribus Networks – Whitebox Fabric
Daniel Kuchenski reviews what he saw from Pluribus Networks at Networking Field Day in September. He focuses on their Netvisor OS and the possibilities it opens for whitebox hardware. Overall he found it a very flexible solution, with robust management and network virtualization capabilities.
Pluribus Networks Is the Definition of “Software Defined”
Tom Hollingsworth looks at how the value of software-defined networking can drive your network forward with Pluribus Networks. For Tom, SDN is about making the hardware less important than what running on top of it. Pluribus showed how their SDN platform can still provide differentiation on newer hardware.
E Tu Pluribus Networks UNUM?
Pluribus Network gave a brief overview of their analytics platform at last month’s Networking Field Day. Rich Stroffolino was impressed that this capability is baked in at the kernel level, which allows for enabling the analytics services without sacrificing performance.
BiB007: Kentik Network Peering & Capacity Planning
On a recent episode of the Briefings in Brief podcast, Ethan Banks looks back at what he saw from Kentik at Networking Field Day last month. This includes a discussion of their full resolution network analytics, with a specific application for peering and service providers.
