Simon Bullen's Weblog

New 10Gbase-T switch from Extreme networks

New switches from Extreme networks are bringing 10Gb switching to the masses for an estimated $25k list per switch.
At long last a device with 10Gbase-t UTP ports allowing the cost of populating the XFP ports to be eliminated and at $4k each that soon mounts up to a lot of money on a high capacity switch.

Extreme has also made the great step of allowing these units to be stacked, creating a single virtual switch out of up to 8 x 1U devices, now I just need to get a freebee....

http://www.extremenetworks.com/products/summit-X650.aspx

Posted at 01:23PM May 21, 2008 by Simon Bullen in Networking  |  Comments[2]

Speedcabling "sport"

According to the BBC, a new 'sport' has taken off in a big way during the last month which sees IT professionals competing to unravel the mass of wires typically found beneath computer desks in offices the world over. 'Speedcabling' sees contestants faced with a tangled mass of up to twelve Ethernet cables of various lengths up to 25 feet which they must separate in the fastest time. To replicate the conditions of the wires in the wild, the networking spaghetti is tied in complex figures of eight then cycled in a tumble dryer. "After that, they're pretty much how they appear in nature," confirmed eccentric Speedcabling founder Steven Schkolne. The first Speedcabling competition took place in an art gallery in Los Angeles and was won by LA-based web developer Matthew Howell. Read More

Posted at 02:51PM Feb 27, 2008 by Simon Bullen in Networking  |  Comments[0]

Cisco stole my idea !

In November 2006 I wrote "So why not combine the features of a stacking switch with the capacity of a chassis ?"

http://blogs.sun.com/sbullen/entry/stacking_chassis_switches
Now it seems that Cisco have embrased the idea on their upgraded 4500 and 6500 switches


The Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series Virtual Switch System (VSS) 1440, which is enabled by the Virtual Switching Supervisor Engine 720 with 10 Gig E. Essentially, the system combines several Catalyst 6500 switches into one. The VSS 1440 scales system bandwidth capacity to as much as 1.44 terabits per second (Tbps). According to Cisco, it also simplifies operation management by allowing multiple Catalyst 6500 Series switches to share a single point of management, single routing instance and single IP address, while also eliminating the need for Spanning Tree and first-hop redundancy protocols like Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol (VRRP).

Read More

Posted at 10:13AM Nov 08, 2007 by Simon Bullen in Networking  |  Comments[0]

Can an Apple iphone kill a Cisco network ?

Well the short answer is yes it can !

The problem started a week ago (Friday 13th believe it or not)at Duke university when IT staff found out that they were getting up to 30,000 ARP requests per second knocking out up to 30 wireless access points for between 10 and 15 minutes. The requests are for what is, at least for Duke’s network, an invalid router address.
Devices use the Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) to request the MAC address of the destination node, for which it already has the IP address.The problem is when the iphone does not get an answer it just keeps asking.

The "misbehaving" iPhones flood the access points with up to 18,000 address requests per second, nearly 10Mbps of bandwidth, which monopolises the AP’s airtime.

Kevin Miller, assistant director, communications infrastructure, with Duke’s Office of Information Technology stated “I don’t believe it’s a Cisco problem in any way, shape, or form,”

Whoops ! Bad call Kevin.

A week later and Duke’s chief information officer is saying:-

“Cisco has provided a fix that has been applied to Duke’s network and there have been no recurrences of the problem since, We are working to fully characterize the issue and will have additional information as soon as possible.”

“Earlier reports that this was a problem with the iPhone in particular have proved to be inaccurate,”

Earlier on Friday, July 20, a Cisco PR spokeswoman via a two-sentence e-mail message said that the networking problem experienced at Duke was “caused by a Cisco-based network issue.” When more details were requested, the spokeswoman replied in e-mail, “this is all we are disclosing at this time.”

Posted at 08:29AM Jul 23, 2007 by Simon Bullen in Networking  |  Comments[0]

Israel-Based Voltaire Plans IPO

Israel-Based Voltaire Plans Initial Public Offering of 7.7 Million Shares

BILLERICA, Mass. (AP) -- Voltaire Ltd., an Israeli developer of server and storage switching products, said Tuesday it plans an initial public offering of 7.7 million ordinary shares. Voltaire expects to offer 5.8 million of the shares. A group of shareholders plan to sell the remaining 1.9 million shares.

In a regulatory filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission Tuesday, Voltaire said it anticipates the shares will price between $12 and $14 per share. Based on an offering price of $13, the value of the deal would total $100 million.

Also assuming an offering price of $13 per share, Voltaire expects to raise $67.5 million from its portion of the IPO, after expenses.

Voltaire plans to use the net proceeds to fund research and development, as well as business development and marketing. The company also plans use $5 million of the net proceeds to repay a loan in full.

For the three months ended March 31, Voltaire reported losses of $4.2 million, after paying preferred dividends, on sales of $8.6 million. Voltaire's top three customers - International Business Machines Corp., Sun Microsystems Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Co. - accounted for 67 percent of the company's sales during the quarter.

Voltaire expects to have 20.5 million shares outstanding after the offering.

Click Here for more

Posted at 10:03AM Jul 11, 2007 by Simon Bullen in Networking  |  Comments[0]

IPv6 taking on national-security implications

While the vast majority of networks today are based on the IPv4 protocol, the U.S. government is mandating that defense and civilian agencies are ready to accept IPv6-based traffic as well by June 2008. Those guiding the effort know the transition won’t be easy, especially given the lack of IPv6-based security products.

Click Here for more information

Posted at 08:25AM Mar 30, 2007 by Simon Bullen in Networking  |  Comments[0]

IP subnet masks, the correct way to say it.

Must be that time of the month for a rant again.

I get fed up when people talk about class C IP address's when they are really trying to describe a /24 address range.
The class system is as follows:-

Class A :-

First bit 0; 7 network bits; 24 host bits
Initial byte: 0 - 127
126 Class As exist (0 and 127 are reserved)
16,777,214 hosts on each Class A

Class B :-

First two bits 10; 14 network bits; 16 host bits
Initial byte: 128 - 191
16,384 Class Bs exist
65,532 hosts on each Class B

Class C :-

First three bits 110; 21 network bits; 8 host bits
Initial byte: 192 - 223
2,097,152 Class Cs exist
254 hosts on each Class C

There are two more less well known classes:-

Class D :-

First four bits 1110; 28 multicast address bits
Initial byte: 224 - 247
Class Ds are multicast addresses - see RFC 1112

Class E :-
First four bits 1111; 28 reserved address bits
Initial byte: 248 - 255
Reserved for experimental use

Or to summerise:-

A 1-126 N.H.H.H
B 128-191 N.N.H.H
C 192-223 N.N.N.H
D 224-239 Not applicable

N=Network H=Host

Right that is that, class-based IP addressing is generally only used by people who do not know what they are talking about (that used to be me many years ago and I still have the bruises to show for my errors).

Many times people will describe an address incorrectly, lets take an address range sample example of 10.0.0.0 to 10.0.0.255. This has a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0 which is a /24 address NOT as many people would describe as a class A address which would have a subnet mask of 255.0.0.0.

If you use the class notation what would you call the following address ? :-
192.128.1.128 255.255.255.252 so you have a network address of .128, two hosts address's of .129 and .130 and a broadcast of .131.
This address is best described as a /30 address, not a class C address as it is classless.

If you have trouble with this check out the nice and simple tables that Cisco have on the web:-

IP addressing tables

Sometimes people strike lucky and call an address such as 192.168.100.0 /24 as a class C address, well in this case you are correct but more by luck than judgment.
Please do the IT world a big favour, get into the 21st centry and use slash notations when describing subnet masks, the class notation dropped out with RIP 1.

Real problems come to light with the class full addressing scheme when we, (yes you guessed it) started using classless addressing or Variable Length Subnet Masks (VLSM). RIP1 was the first victim of this, Since non-CIDR routing updates do not include subnet masks, a router must assume that the subnet mask it has been configured with is valid for all subnets. Well the users were the real victims when RIP would summerise a /25 address into a /24. You could get away with this if you were lucky but generally you had the other half of the /24 on another past of the network and suddenly you have two routes advertised for the same network.

Posted at 01:18PM Mar 29, 2007 by Simon Bullen in Networking  |  Comments[2]

Is Sun taking over Extreme Networks ?

First there was :-

"Extreme networks appoints ex Sun Microsystems Mark Canepa as CEO"

Then there was :-

"Douglas Murray appointed as VP and general manager of the Volume products group who prior to joining Extreme Networks was with Sun Microsystems, where he oversaw Global Alliances for the Storage Division"

And now :-

"Extreme Networks Appoints Helmut Wilke To Senior Vice President Of Worldwide Sales

Wilke brings 25 years of key worldwide management experience with proven results in solutions selling, accelerating sales productivity and business improvement.

SANTA CLARA, Calif., March 7 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Extreme Networks, Inc. (Nasdaq: EXTR) today announced that it is transitioning its worldwide sales leadership with the appointment of Helmut Wilke to senior vice president of worldwide sales. Wilke replaces Frank Carlucci, who is leaving the Company to spend more time with his young family and pursue separate career opportunities, effective April 2nd.
Extreme Networks is continuing its efforts to better position the Company to meet global customer needs with differentiated, industry-leading network technologies and solutions. The Company leverages both a direct global sales force and worldwide channels.
"Helmut Wilke brings to us critical expertise managing a global sales force and leading productivity improvements. He joins Extreme Networks at time where he can help grow our business in both the service provider and enterprise markets," said Mark Canepa, president and CEO of Extreme Networks. "I would like to thank Frank Carlucci for his valuable contributions to Extreme Networks over the past three years, where he has helped to build effective worldwide teams and been focused on the needs of our customers and partners,"
Leveraging 25 years of sales management experience in the high technology and communications industry, with market leaders such as Sun Microsystems and Software AG, Helmut Wilke will be responsible for leading Extreme Networks' worldwide sales teams and its global channels.
Throughout his career, Wilke has gained key sales experience and produced measurable results. As senior vice president of operations and support for Sun Microsystems, Wilke drove sales productivity improvements by simplifying and globalizing sales support systems. Prior to this, Wilke served as the vice president of sales and President of Sun Microsystems, Germany, where he led a group with 1,500 employees, transitioning it to a solutions-focused approach. Prior to Sun, Wilke was the CEO and president of Software AG, a leading manufacturer of software and systems for large corporations."

Posted at 03:03PM Mar 28, 2007 by Simon Bullen in Networking  |  Comments[1]

More 10Gb innovations

Neterion are pushing the 10Gb envelope with the Xframe II Sun Fire host system.

Unlike IB customers , customers who capitalize on Ethernet, the proven industry-standard for 30 years, next generation 10 Gigabit Ethernet allows end-users to preserve their existing environment: operating systems, network administration tools, core cabling, personnel training, etc.
Xframe II dramatically increases network performance, eliminates bottlenecks resulting from the explosion of data volumes, frees-up server and userlevel bandwidth, boosts application response and slashes data backup times.

* Up to 8x higher throughput
* 50% lower latency
* TCP processing overhead reduced by 40%
* Up to 8-fold reduction in cabling expense

Posted at 11:20AM Mar 15, 2007 by Simon Bullen in Networking  |  Comments[0]

Back to Back IB

It seems that for various reasons that a lot of people want to be able to run 2 machines back to back with an IB interconnect.
While this should be a fairly simple operation to perform, life in the IB world makes it quites hard to achieve.

Why ?

Well it's down to to the subnet manager, this on small deployments resides on the switch, for larger deployments this moves to a host and as with most things in life the bigger they are the more they cost. So with a back-to-back rig do you really want to spend a lot of money on a host based SM ? well of coarse not. So what are your options, well you only have one and that is using openIB.

But lets drop a little issue into the pot, you want to run Solaris not Linux, what are your options then ?

Not a lot is the answer, but what if Sun made the Solaris SM open source ?

We have had Grid engine open source for ages now and it is one of the best bits of software out there for scheduling so I say lets make Solaris SM open source and let people run small back to back solutions on the best , most reliable and stable operating systems in the world.

If you have an opinion on this please let me know.

tags [infiniband][network]

Posted at 04:54PM Mar 08, 2007 by Simon Bullen in Networking  |  Comments[2]

Cisco enter the social networking market place.

Cisco has aquired Five Across a private company who's software "empowers companies to easily augment their websites with full-featured communities and user-generated content such as audio/video/photo sharing, blogs, podcasts, and profiles"

More:-

tags [cisco][networking]

Posted at 01:45PM Feb 27, 2007 by Simon Bullen in Networking  |  Comments[0]

10Gb takes it's next step forward.

10Gb moves on yet again while IB stands still, but this time the movement has not come from a network vendor but from Sun.
This product is a brand new, internally designed multi-threaded 10Gb network card.

Why is it unique ?

Sun's 10Gb Ethernet Adapter extends CPU and OS parallelism to networking with its support for hardware-based flow classification and multiple DMAs. Using CPU thread affinity to bind a given flow to a specific CPU thread, it enables a one-to-one correlation of Rx and Tx packets across the same TCP connection. This can help avoid cross-calls and context switching to deliver greater performance while reducing the need for CPU resources to support I/O processing.

The Sun 10 Gigabit Ethernet Adapter utilizes Sun's own innovative MAC Controller to map the 10Gb XAUI interface onto the PCI Express form factor. It supports 10 GB/sec bandwidth using four transmit and four receive lanes, enabling higher density and a lower pin-count to reduce costs while improving performance. As a result, local area networks using the Adapter can immediately benefit from increased speed and efficiency.



* Dual 10 GE port x8 PCI Express 1.1 compliant, Fiber XFP MSA compliant Low Profile plug-in adapter

* IEEE 802.3ae 2002 compliant

* Uses Sun's own ASIC and Software for innovative Throughput Networking design

* Networking I/O virtualization is built in to support progression in the upper layer virtualization software

* Hardware-based flow classification for extending parallelism and virtualization to networking

More information from www.sun.com

http://blogs.sun.com/hendel/entry/russian_dolls - Ariel Hendel
http://blogs.sun.com/markusflierl/entry/crossbow_and_neptune - Markus Flierl

tags [10Gb][neptune]

Posted at 09:56AM Feb 20, 2007 by Simon Bullen in Networking  |  Comments[13]

Force10 switches to open source NetBSD for core switch OS

10G Ethernet vendor Force10 Networks is changing the operating system on its data center switches to NetBSD, an open source platform, with the aim of improving switch performance for customers.

The switch company has ported its Force10 Operating System (FTOS) from Wind River's VxWorks, a proprietary real-time operating system, to open source NetBSD, in an effort to make its switches more stable and flexible.

Force10 says the modular architecture of NetBSD will make its switch software more stable and easier to manage, especially for users running lots of network services or advanced protocols. The company adds that NetBSD will enable its E-series switches to operate like a Unix server, which runs separate applications and processes on top of a core operating system.

Network services will be easier to turn on and off this way, and new applications for the switch will be easier to develop, says Sachi Sambandan, vice president of engineering at Force10 Networks. Users will be able "to build networks that can expand as new applications are added while maintaining predictable performance," he says.

Network vendors have used Linux and BSD-variant operating systems for years in appliances such as firewalls, small office or home router, and VPN gear. Lately, router vendors have begun to make open source a more central part of their systems. Cisco uses a Linux-based services blade on its Integrated Services Routers and 3Com recently released the Linux-based Open Services Networking blade for its routers.

While 3Com and Cisco run their core operating systems on proprietary code, others companies put open source in the core of their network gear. Extreme Networks' XOS operating system for its BlackDiamond, Summit and Alpine switches is based on a modified version of Linux. Vyatta takes this a step further with its Open Flexible Router, a free, Linux-based router/firewall software product based on the open-source eXtensible Open Router Project stack.

Force10 says NetBSD will add another layer of redundancy and stability on top of its three-tier processor architecture, which uses separate chips to run switching, routing and management tasks, as opposed to combining these processes onto a single chip — and a single point of failure.

One observer says users should expect to see open source become a more prominent component in networking gear, as opposed to a behind-the-curtain technology.

Posted at 07:27PM Feb 15, 2007 by Simon Bullen in Networking  |  Comments[0]

3750E specifications

I decided to look at the specification for the platform I would use the most the WS-C3750E-48TD-S, the specification on this platform

• 48 10/100/1000 ports + 2 X2-based 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports - excellent, would have liked XFP's but nothing wrong with X2 units.

• 64-Gbps, high-speed StackWise Plus stacking- not quite sure how the maths is done on this, is this 32Gb for the whole stack ? ie 8Gb full duplex per cable, if this is the case it is below the other vendors.

• 68-Gbps, wire rate backplane- Why ? you have 48 ports, plus 2 10Gb plus stacking, this totals 168Gb total bandwidth requirements

• Field-replaceable 265WAC power supply and fan tray- good

• 1 rack unit (RU) stackable multilayer switch - industry standard

• IPv6 - hate it

• Ethernet Management port: RJ-45 connectors, 2-pair Cat-5 UTP cabling

• 128-Gbps switching fabric - expecting more

• Stack-forwarding rate of 95 Mpps for 64-byte packets

Forwarding rate:
101.2 Mpps
* IP Base software feature set (IPB) - fine with me.

* Reduction of Hazardous Substances (ROHS) 5 - we couldn't sell it if it wasn't.

Auto configuration is an excellent idea.

Overall not bad, not someting to get very excited about. I have listened to the video on the cisco site and it make some rather interesting statements regarding the resiliance of the stack that I would like to investigate further. I would love them to be true but I am not going to get my hopes up.

Posted at 12:10PM Feb 12, 2007 by Simon Bullen in Networking  |  Comments[0]

New Cisco 3750E - let's hope its better than the old one.

Cisco announced the Catalyst 3750-E and 3560-E Series switches, enterprise-class lines of 10/100/1000 wiring closet switches with 10 Gigabit Ethernet uplinks and full Power over Ethernet (PoE) configurations. The switches are part of Cisco StackWise Plus and are backward compatible, meaning users can stack and integrate them with the existing 3750 Series switches, 3750G with integrated Wireless LAN Controller and Cisco Integrated Services Routers (ISRs). Other features include a Cisco TwinGig Converter Module, which lets users change GigE uplinks to a 10 GigE uplink for future proofing, and full PoE, providing 802.3af Class 3 power on every port in a single rack unit form factor.

Posted at 11:25AM Feb 07, 2007 by Simon Bullen in Networking  |  Comments[0]