Archive

Certainty, Scale, Spectrum…? Sweet alliteration Chris, but what are you trying to say? I’m glad you asked! Let’s sift backwards through the significantly soft sounds and see what sentience I can supply: Spectrum? No, not a band of colors – the Spectrum I’m talking about here is Silicon. Specifically, it’s the ASIC from Mellanox Technologies […]

Networks are changing. More and more we’re hearing terms like whitebox, britebox, disaggregation, NOS, commodity hardware, and open source when we talk about the future of networking. I’ll assume you get that and spare you a description of these terms here. If you do want a crash course on network disaggregation and how it relates […]

The first ever VMware EMPOWER 2018 partner event was held last week (16-19 April) in Atlanta, GA. Seems like I was just there. This time I  joined almost 1,000 folks who work at VMware partners around the globe, and a few who work at VMware/Dell/EMC/Pivotal/Etc. I’m pretty new to this community, so it was a […]

When your name is an adjective, you’re just asking to be the brunt of many punishing puns. Based on the chatter during the second day of NFD17, that is certainly true for Extreme Networks. In fact, it’s actually hard to avoid. So let’s just dive right in to extreme automation, with Extreme Networks. I hope […]

I recently had the privilege of hearing from the Juniper Networks Contrail product team at their offices in Sunnyvale. I was pleasantly surprised by the pragmatic and comprehensive approach they are taking in growing the product line. By the middle of this year (2018) there will be four distinct products; Contrail Networking, Contrail Security, Contrail […]

Last week I was in Atlanta with 879 of my friends for NANOG 72; the seventy second meeting of the North American Network Operators Group. NANOG is always a marathon of presentations, conversations, meals, and meetings. This one was no different – a whirlwind of learning, talking, speaking, and yes, even a bit of drinking. […]

Networking Field Day 17 is a wrap. What a week! My first Tech Field Day event did not disappoint. As expected, I met many smart, quick, and funny folks, and I got unprecedented access to some of the biggest names in networking. How better to close this event out than with a short debrief of […]

I’m pumped! In just two days I fly out to the West Coast to participate in my very first Tech Field Day event. These Field Day events “bring together innovative IT product vendors and independent thought leaders to share information and opinions in a presentation and discussion format.” I’ve learned a ton watching past events and I’m super excited […]

The API is the new CLI.  If you’re a network engineer who pays attention to new technology, you’ve certainly heard some variation of this statement. But is it true?  Let’s start with the basics.  You know what a Command Line Interface (CLI) is; it’s how you talk to your switches and routers, and possibly many other devices […]