Peter Welcher

If you think about it, one problem in networking is that there are too many applications, and too little time. I greatly enjoyed a recent blog by  @RealLisaC, seasonally titled The Ghost of Application-Aware Networking. Excellent reading! It can be found at http://theborgqueen.wordpress.com/2013/10/29/the-ghost-of-application-aware-networking/. The following blog represents various thoughts that it and my…

I keep seeing use case discussions where SDN magically solves bandwidth problems. I am very interested in them. I do wish the authors would take the time to explain the network topology and their assumptions. Frankly, this does not add up for me, at least not without some additional information.…

I've been watching for additional tidbits of information about Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI), prior to Cisco's big announcements expected on November 6, 2013. This blog summarizes some new information about ACI and related matters. A New Cisco Blog Gary Kinghorn of Cisco just posted a new blog about ACI. Key…

Well, I intended to write about IWAN, then Cisco and Akamai crept into the picture with a partnership announcement. Here's what that's all about... IWAN If you haven't run across the Cisco acronym "IWAN", expect to hear more about it. IWAN, as in Internet as WAN.  The Cisco ISR G2…

Have you heard about the Cisco 4451-X ISR router? Have you taken a look at it? I'm asking because I try to stay aware of new Cisco products, and somehow the 4451-X announcement slipped by me (around June per Google search of Cisco blogs -- probably that frenetic sleep-deprived week…

This blog is about Good Links I've come across recently, as of 10/14/2013. Admittedly, some are older links, in some cases ones I already knew about. Topics include FabricPath, OTV, ASA Cluster on Nexus, VPC, VXLAN, DFA (Dynamic Fabric Automation), ACI (Application Centric Infrastructure), and VMware/Nicira NSX. For VXLAN, I'm…

In a spirit of fairness (and also because it is legally required by the FTC), I am posting this Disclosure Statement. It is intended to alert readers to funding or [...]

I've been reading blogs and articles about Application Aware Networking, and thinking. There seem to be many rather differing ideas about it. A lot of vendors / people seem to think the applications will (and should) tell the network what they want. Let's think about that together ...   The Application…

Brocade was kind enough to go over some new product / feature announcements with me. They are being formally announced this morning, Wednesday September 18, 2013. I'm going to pass along much of the press release information in condensed form, and then comment at length on the 5600 vRouter announcement. …

This blog is a quick note about some Nexus issues I've encountered or heard about recently.  The saga starts with a Nexus 7010 with M1 and F1 cards having many EIGRP resets. Problem #1 Nexus 7K connected to 6500 switch. The configuration on both Nexus and connected 6500 looked approximately like:…

I have some comments about a recent article on Using Network Virtualization in Campus Networks. I appreciate the author’s attempt to compare. The article omitted some relevant points. Or the author [...]

Do you recall a lot of talk a year or two ago about SDN or perhaps OpenFlow and finding the right level of abstraction? What ever happened to that? Did we [...]