The Lippis Report

WAN bandwidth, or the lack thereof, is the single largest contributor to poor application performance in branch offices resulting in reduced productivity and the inability of IT to implement their entire strategy. This is especially acute as applications are increasingly centralized in data centers and video traffic starts to dominate flows all of which put more pressure on the WAN. A new approach to wide area networking takes advantage of virtualization concepts. WAN virtualization promises to reduce WAN cost and increase performance. If your WAN utilizes T1 MPLS links at $300/month or higher and ADSL between $10-$15/ month, then you can benefit significantly from WAN virtualization as it offers 3 to 4 times the bandwidth at lower cost and in the process eliminates WAN design constraints limiting IT business leaders. Keith Morris of Talari Networks joins me to discuss WAN Virtualization. I have first-hand knowledge of how good this solution works; if you fit the above profile, then listen up.

IBM System Network looks into its clients’ needs and extracted their top 10 predictions. The data center network is experiencing a major transformation to support server virtualization and cloud computing, convergence of data storage, application-to-application traffic and new high-performance applications. To address these needs, the data center network will become smarter and faster in 2012. Here are 10 reasons why:

By Jim Metzler, Ashton Metzler & Associates

This white paper proposes a new approach to architecting and designing data center networks for current dynamic and highly virtualized data centers.

By CIO Magazine

Feature-rich, next-generation networks help drive innovation and value to midsize companies and position them for competitive advantage. Next-generation networks give midsize companies a competitive advantage. By removing many of the operational headaches of running a network, Cisco’s solutions free up departments to focus on driving business value and innovation. Feature-rich, strategic networks built for today and tomorrow remove the barriers to growth and give midsize businesses the agility they require to lead their markets. Find out how by downloading this executive white paper.

Andre Kindness, Senior Analyst at Forrester Research, joins Zeus Kerravala, principal at ZK Research, and I for our annual predictions podcast. We discuss Cisco, IBM Network Systems, Huawei, Juniper, Extreme, Arista, Nicira, Big Switch, Verizon, AT&T, HP Networking, Citrix, F5, Riverbed, Brocade, Broadcom, Meru, Aerohive, Ruckus, Meraki, Infoblox, Palo Alto Networks, Polycom, Embrane, et al, and what 2012 will bring for them and you. Enjoy, Nick

Having a plan to transition to IPv6 has moved way up in the priority list of IT projects for IT leaders as 2011 was officially the year we ran out of IPv4 unallocated addresses and not having IPv6 could cut-off corporations and applications from accessing the internet. In addition employees en masse are “BYOD” or bring your own device meaning smartphone and tables to work increasing the number of devices on the network significantly. These devices and their applications are driving support of both IPv4 and IPv6 as many mobile devices are now set for IPv6 as the default. As dual stack IP v4/v6 is the best practice, the real challenge lies within the domain name service or DNS. Infloblox has developed a range of solutions to automate the transition to IPv6 by supporting both addressing schemes. Tom Coffeen, Chief IPv6 Evangelist at Infoblox talks about solutions to automate the transition to IPv6. It’s one of our best IPv6 discussions.

The Inflobox plug-in module for VMware’s vCenter Orchestrator promises to bridge network and virtual IT team silos by enabling automated assignment of IP addresses to VMs. The Infloblox plug-in enables IP addresses to be automatically assigned to virtual machines in less than a minute and then constantly monitored and managed, which simplifies troubleshooting, accelerates time to value and offers greater flexibility for the virtual team. Steve Garrison, VP Marketing for Infoblox and I discuss the problems of networking in virtualized environments and how Infoblox’s vCenter plug-in solves them.

By Cisco Systems

A new enterprise architecture for delivering policy-based services has become available. This document discusses the need for a policy-based architecture in today’s enterprise networks and presents “Policy-Governed Network” architecture as a pragmatic business solution. Building identity and context awareness into the network is critical to implementing an effective infrastructure.
Major topics include:

● What policies are and who implements them
● Changing network dynamics and problematic new technologies
● Important challenges to implementers
● Characteristics of a Policy-Governed Network architecture
● Policy-implementation platform: the Cisco® Identity Services Engine
● Scenarios showing how policies can address specific network issues
● How to begin transitioning to a Policy-Governed Network

While the Lippis Report test were being conducted of the Alcatel-Lucent OmniSwitchTM 6900-X40, Jean Luc Ronarch, Director Product Line Management Stackable Switches at Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise joined me to discuss the firm’s latest product investment. We talk cloud network architecture and what’s unique about the new OmniSwitchTM 6900-X40.

Download “Fall 2011 Open Industry Network Performance And Power Test Report” here.

While the Lippis Report test were being conducted of the Extreme Networks BlackDiamond® X8 Core and Summit® X670V ToR data center fabric switches at Ixia’s iSimCity, Darius Goodall, Product and Technical Marketing of Extreme joined me to discuss the firm’s latest product investment. We talk cloud network architecture and what’s unique about the new X8 and X670V.

Download “Fall 2011 Open Industry Network Performance And Power Test Report” here.

Access Control List or ACL are important tools in the configuration and customization of network attributes, especially with the Catalyst 6500. In the Catalyst 6500 upgrade with Sup2T, the TCAM has been both increased and its architecture improved. For ACL, a major concern was the lack of visibility of TCAM overflows when new ACL scripts were submitted, disrupting network operation. Therefore, Cisco developed the ACL Dry Run and ACL Atomic Commit to mitigate this scenario. To verify ACL improvements, we use ACL Dry-Run to assure that the TCAM would not overflow, and then implement the changes safely with ACL Atomic-commit; assuring no network interruption. It’s a great short video that verifies how useful these new tools are in ACL management.

Download “A Comprehensive Testing of Cisco Systems Catalyst 6500 Sup2T” report here.

For IPv4 and IPv6, dual stack implementations are most popular where desktops and mobile devices run both IPv4 and IPv6, therefore, the network infrastructure needs to support both equally at high performance. IPv6 performance has not been on par with IPv4 until now. To demonstrate how the Catalyst 6500 upgrade with Sup2T has improved IPv6 performance, we measure IPv4 and IPv6 unicast and bidirectional traffic performance via RFC 2544. IP Multicast traffic has been on the rise, thanks to the increased use of video services within the enterprise. Therefore, we test IP Multicast performance via RFC 3918 on the new Catalyst 6500 Sup2T to stresses its packet replication ASIC built into the 6908-10G line cards. We find that the new Catalyst 6500 delivers equal Ipv4 and Ipv6 performance; a 2x increase from the Sup720 for IP unicast, bidirectional and multicast forwarding.

Download “A Comprehensive Testing of Cisco Systems Catalyst 6500 Sup2T” report here.

One of the most impressive network design options available on the Catalyst 6500 is the use of VSS. Connecting two Catalyst 6500s equipped with Sup2Ts creates a virtual switch, adding each switch’s performance while operating as a single switch thus eliminating spanning tree in favor for active-active links. We configure two Catalyst 6500s via VSS. We measure throughput performance to verify that VSS throughput rates are equally high performance as the MPLS and VPLS scenarios. Check out the two-Catalyst 6500 configurations we deployed for this test.

Download “A Comprehensive Testing of Cisco Systems Catalyst 6500 Sup2T” report here.

Network virtualization, or the ability to divide a physical network into multiple logical networks with unique attributes, is a design that has grown in popularity as IT business leaders have sort ways to segment their network with different attributes for different user groups. This is popular in healthcare, education, travel and other industries. Network virtualization can be implemented either in IP, and/or MPLS. In addition connecting the Catalyst 6500 directly to service provider MPLS networks is another popular design; therefore we test throughput performance for both scenarios here.

For active-active data center operation, disaster planning and load balancing are best practices when connecting data centers via MPLS or VPLS. VPLS layer 2 connected data centers deliver LAN-like service over the campus and/or wide area network. Layer 2 connectivity is important as server-server communications expect layer 2 connectivity as most applications have been designed with this assumption. For connecting more than two data centers, VPLS offers mesh connectivity. Data centers connected via VPLS look and act as if they are on the same LAN. Therefore, we test that VPLS throughput performance rates are equally high performance in this scenario as MPLS.

Download “A Comprehensive Testing of Cisco Systems Catalyst 6500 Sup2T” report here.