Kentik is no stranger to Networking Field Day, and recently did a presentation at our event last month. Pete Welcher was a delegate at the event and shares his thoughts on what he saw from them in this post. They showed off their cloud-based big data approach to analyzing flow data from internal sources and the cloud. Kentik is now able to ingest AWS and GCP flow records, with support for Azure coming in 2019. Pete was impressed by the amount of data this agentless approach can obtain.
Cisco Catalyst Wifi, Take Two
In this post, notable Canadian and Networking Field Day delegate Rob Coote digs into the Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controller from Cisco, positioned as their next-generation wireless platform. At Networking Field Day, Cisco highlighted three key improvements from previous Aironet products: Always-on, security, and the ability to deploy anywhere. Rob think the overall popularity of Catalyst 9k switches should provide a good basis for the success of the wireless platform.
Routers Getting Routered – Silver Peak SD-WAN
At Networking Field Day last month, Silver Peak made the argument that their SD-WAN appliances should replace routers in an enterprise deployment. As a delegate at the event, Orhan Ergun was impressed by their Unity Orchestrator SD-WAN controller, which provided a single tool for statistics , advanced reporting, configuration and maintenance. That combined with a very flexible feature set and zero-touch provisioning made Orhan think Silver Peak won’t have a problem fulfilling their router replacement promise.
BiB 067: Custom APIs For Business Logic With BlueCat Gateway
Ethan Banks posted a new episodes of the Briefings in Brief podcast highlighting BlueCat Networks, which he saw at Networking Field Day last month. This episode highlight BlueCat Gateway, a way for businesses to make custom APIs specific to their business for BlueCat’s DDI platform. This lives as an easy to deploy Docker image, with a community-driven GitHub repository to share successful workflows. For Ethan, this kind of community engagement is critical for success of an API-driven solution.
Automating the Mundane with Silver Peak
Tom Hollingsworth takes a look at what Silver Peak presented at Networking Field Day. The SD-WAN company doesn’t just stop at basic SDN automation. SDN has long been used for automatic VLAN provisioning for ports, but Silver Peak showed how their automation can handle even more mundane tasks, like an RMA process. This takes it off the plate of admin busy work, and frees up productivity.
DNS: More Than Just Name Resolution
Kevin Blackburn was a delegate at Networking Field Day last month, and clearly was intrigued by what he heard from BlueCat Networks. During their presentation, the company showed how DNS can be more than simple name resolution. This involves using it for threat protection and utilizing as a store of a single source of networking truth. For Kevin, this was some next-level DNS.
Apstra’s Intent-Based Networking
Pete Welcher continues his excellent look at the presentations from Networking Field Day last month, focusing on Apstra in this post. As Pete points out, the company was ahead of the curve, trumpeting Intent-Based Networking before it became a buzz word. He reviews their vendor-neutral approach, and how quickly the company demonstrated deploying and configuring AOS.
When Is It Not Always DNS?
During their recent Networking Field Day presentation, BlueCat Networks posited that DNS is unreliable because it was never designed to actually be reliable. Tom Hollingsworth looks at the security implications of this, and the merits of BlueCat’s unified DNS, DHCP and IPAM platform.
BiB 064: Is Riverbed’s SD-WAN Product Too Late To Matter?
Ethan Banks hosted another episode of Briefings in Brief, looking at the Networking Field Day presentation from Riverbed. The presentation focused on Riverbed’s was on their SD-WAN solution. With a rich legacy in the WAN optimization market, Ethan thinks the company is well poised to transition customers to these SD-WAN solutions. He also looks at how their SteelHead SD and SteelConnect SDI appliances fit within their portfolio.
Silver Peak is Serious about SD-WAN
Silver Peak’s presentation at Networking Field Day last month got Pete Welcher thinking. He thinks the company made a well timed jump from WAN appliances to SD-WAN, with their Unity EdgeConnect being their unified SD-WAN offering. Their presentation made the case for replacing traditional WAN routers with SD-WAN devices. Pete looks at some of the technical benefits and drawbacks to that approach.
BiB 063: Can An SD-WAN Device Replace A WAN Router?
On this episode of Briefings in Brief, Ethan Banks looks at what Silver Peak presented at Networking Field Day last month. The SD-WAN company focused their Field Day presentation on how their solutions can be replacements for conventional WAN routers. Ethan looks at if WAN routers are the ancient devices Silver Peak presented, and if an SD-WAN device is a suitable replacement.
MPLS for the masses: The need for simplicity and standardization, at least in networking (The wheel has already been invented)
Nicola Modena found a kindred spirit when he heard Apstra present at Networking Field Day last month. Both share an appreciation for removing the superfluous and using the right tools and in the right way. Their Apstra Operating System was made to create and manage multivendor Clos IP Fabrics. As part of this, Apstra included a number of standard configuration models that fit within this ethos. After talking to Apstra, while their customers are at liberty to modify these configuration, the vast majority leave them in their essential state.
BiB 062: Globally Scalable Microsegmentation With Illumio
Ethan Banks posted a recent Briefings in Brief episode discussing what was presented by Illumio at Networking Field Day last month. This marked Illumio’s return to the event, and they used their presentation to highlight their Policy Compute Engine Supercluster. This provides a a cluster of Policy Compute Engines, which can be used for massive scale that would otherwise choke a single controller. Ethan was impressed the company did a live demo showing the Supercluster in action with 225K workloads across three AWS regions. Make sure you check out their demo yourself with our full video coverage.
Illumio PCE Supercluster Launch: Behind the Scenes
Illumio returned to Networking Field Day earlier this week, with the launch of PCE Supercluster, providing centralized policy management and global application visibility at scale. In this video, the team takes a look at what went into planning that announcement, including organizing a quarter million workloads demo.
BlueCat: DNS, DDI + Visibility and Workflow Automation
In this post, Pete Welcher continues his excellent look at the presenters from Networking Field Day earlier this month. Looking at BlueCat Networks, he thought they made an interesting case for their managed DNS and IPAM address management solution. Though DNS and DDI can be seen as somewhat commodified, BlueCat argued that DNS provides network visibility, while DDI can serve as a single source of truth. Both are seen as vital for business workflow automation.
Illumio: Micro-Segmentation via the Endpoint
Pete Welcher has seen a number of Networking Field Day presentations. That;s why it’s impressive when he says that Illumio’s recent presentation may have had one the best demos the event has ever seen! They showed how their newly announced PCE SuperCluster can provide automated leveraging of endpoints, rather than dedicated firewalls, to provide uniform micro-segmentation onsite or in the cloud. Make sure to watch the demo for yourself with our comprehensive event video coverage.
micro-segmentation at scale
Illumio made their return to Networking Field Day earlier this month, and Marina Ferreira was there to take in the presentation. The company took the event to launch their PCE Supercluster enhancement to their Adaptive Security Platform (ASP) solution, which will allow for a federated multi-region micro-segmentation architecture with centralized policy management and global visibility at scale. Marina was fascinated at some of the development potential their platform could enable for advanced analytics.
Network Automation and Monitoring with Apstra AOS
Jed Casey attended his first Networking Field Day event earlier this month. He got to hear from a variety of prominent networking companies, and in this post, he highlights what he saw from Apstra. Their AOS has been an early innovating in the intent-based networking space. During this presentation, they discussed bringing intent to automation and monitoring.
The Glue that brings the Intent together!
While Apstra is no stranger to Networking Field Day, Al Rasheed got to hear them for the first time as a delegate at the event earlier this month. He digs into their presentation, and how the company’s AOS isn’t just about using Intent for Day 1 operation, but how the company has innovated around bringing intent to automation and analytics.
Apstra’s NFD19 Experience: Part 1
Carly Stoughton has presented at a few Tech Field Day events, but Networking Field Day earlier this month was the first time the delegates got to see her present for Apstra. Using her whiteboard prowess, she was able to showcase Apstra AOS and how it enables organizations to embrace intent across automation and analytics.
