Srinivas Kotamraju Jan 7, 2009

mlearson:

We are glad to hear that this extension will help you to get your proposal into the contest.

You can change your team members as long as you have not submitted your proposal. Also, note that you can submit multiple proposals.

Please make sure to register your new team accordingly.

Here is the registration link :
http://www.cisco.com/offer/axpdevelopers/167077_1

We look forward to your proposal!

Best,
Srini

Shashi Kiran Jan 7, 2009

Hi mlearson:

Choose your team members, so they bring the right set of skills to the table. For example, if you’re an application developer but don’t get the branch pain points or are unfamiliar with the network, it could help to (ideally) team up with somebody who’s an IT solution architect or somebody who has the relevant domain expertise. Of course, if you are an individual or team with expertise across all three, there’s nothing like it!

Leonardo G. da Silva Jan 11, 2009

I can’t believe!. My team worked so hard to write, revise and finalize the proposal before 12th January. This phase 1 extension is not an incentive for committed people.

Zingmein Li Jan 11, 2009

Dear Mr.Shashi Kiran,

We are grateful for this news and thank you for consideration to us. Our team is time limited for first proposal. But we have two ideas we want to propose and submit. We saw your VMWARE demostration and will be using to test our ideas. I wish to tell you that one of our team colleagues is having registration problems but we will insert his name into our proposal document. We are also using our university laboratory to test our simulation.

Shashi Kiran Jan 13, 2009

Hello Leonardo,

First, thank you for your perseverance and the hardwork that your team has put in so far towards this contest. We deeply appreciate that. We had to make a call on the extension due to the reasons articulated in the previous blog post, and it was a delicate call to make. However, we thought the benefits outweighed the disadvantages, especially as it gave more time to people who had submitted their proposals to refine it, and/or submit other entries. We truly hope that you will avail this opportunity.

Best,
Shashi Kiran

Shashi Kiran Jan 13, 2009

Dear Zingmein Li,

We appreciate your feedback, and are glad that you’re using the opportunity to submit proposals. I am not sure what problems you are having with registration. If you like you could blog about specific problems here, or write us a note at . So far, we have not received any comments on registration issues, save for one blogger who was from a country that was not part of the pull down list.

Good luck with your proposals!

Henry J. Williams Jan 27, 2009

Hi there Cisco team,

me and my brother-in-law plan to make a submission. we have dowloaded your documentation and VM. It is good to get the extra time, but i would like to develop some prototype apps. and get feedback from cisco before we submit. Will Cisco evaluate feasibility of our code if we agree to share it openly for review? will cisco make a decision on how code executes?

Shashi Kiran Jan 28, 2009

Hello Henry,

We will not be able to provide feedback on any specific applications that you intend to submit to the contest. However, you’re welcome to utilize either this blog or the Cisco Developer contest discussion forum, and get feedback on capabilities of the AXP.

Phase-1 of this contest is about submitting proposals. For the finalists selected to go into Phase-2, Cisco will be handholding them during the application development phase, without directly providing feedback on the applications themselves.

Cisco’s decision on the entry will be adjudged by a panel of internal and external judges in accordance with the judging criteria outlined in our terms and conditions.

Good luck!

Mark Hurtz Feb 2, 2009

Hi,

I posted this in a couple of places on the forum but didn’t get a response. We’re concerned about the security of this application and its impact on the CPE. What if the app crashes and brings the CPE device down. In my corporate, the Ops team owns the WAN CPE_gateway, and are paranoid on giving app access to it. If you’ve some manuals or performance reports that talk about CPU impact on CPE, and how WAN failures affect my apps, I would be interested to get hold of them. Any 3rd party non-Cisco reports?

John Voss Feb 4, 2009

Hi Mark,

The AXP modules run self contained inside the router and have their own independent physical CPU, memory and disk (or flash memory in the case of the AIM AXP module).  Since AXP modules have their own CPU and memory, applications running on AXP do not have any impact on the CPU or memory of the router itself.

In the event of a severe application failure, the failure would be limited to the runtime environment on the AXP module.  Even if the Linux operating system on the AXP module were to crash, the failure would be contained to the AXP module and would not have any impact on the operations of the router or any of the other services/modules present in the router.

Regarding your concern over how WAN failures would impact applications running AXP, AXP provides APIs so that your applications can be notified programmatically when a WAN failure has occurred.  This enables you to put some logic in your applications to take specific actions in the event of a WAN failure and then take additional actions when the WAN link becomes available again.

The direct link to the AXP product documentation is http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps9701/products_installation_and_configuration_guides_list.html

Additional information can be found at http://www.cisco.com/go/axp and http://developer.cisco.com/web/axp/home

I hope this addresses your Ops teams concerns.  If you have any follow up questions, please let us know.

Best Regards,

John Voss

Shashi Kiran Feb 6, 2009

@Mark - great questions, and ones we deliberated very early on, both to assure ourselves and our customers. As John mentions, this is self contained. He covered the resiliency angle very well. While inherently secure, as you know, security is always dependent on the implementation. Incidentally, this whole concept was seeded by a security requirement to begin with. Perhaps calls for a seperate blog

John Miyake Feb 7, 2009

Is the expectation that you would need to factor in security considerations for the contest submission? We’re assuming security to be inherently available on the router. CAn we have virtualized instances of applications which are self-contained or current architecture not support that?

Anurag Gurtu Feb 9, 2009

We use layered security architecture. The first layer is the router where you can implement ACL(s), NAT, tunneling, IDS/IPS, etc. The second line of security is the hosted operating system i.e. AXP Host OS., which is Cisco Linux (hardened) and uses Virtualization to support applications, i.e. the third layer of security. This layer isolated once application’s instance from another. Hence each application runs within it’s own dedicated container. Application too can run iptables and add another layer of security if desired. As mentioned earlier, if an application freezes, crashes or dies, it neither affects another application’s instance, AXP Host OS or the router.

Shashi Kiran Feb 11, 2009

High time to do a blog on security. Perhaps it’d be interesting to share the origins of this concept for Cisco on AXP. Not many people know it. Let me see if I need to get some security clearances first. Interesting bit of trivia actually.

web hosting Jun 12, 2009

Well I think security is pretty much important. Look at how many people are embedding ssl certificates on their sites for example. Everyone has an anti-virus installed on their pc, we tend to lock everything up that’s life.

seo services Sep 15, 2009

Cisco is holding a contest for Linux developers as a way to familiarize them with its Network as a Platform concept. The goal is to generate applications to run on Cisco’s Application Extension Platform and to create a Linux developer network.

seo services Sep 15, 2009

This is shaping-up to be an interesting week for some of the big IT players, and their intentions to build-out their cloud strategies. But within these announcements, there are also some fascinating implications that aren’t making the headlines… ye

BrianS Nov 12, 2009

I like the idea of extending the deadline, hopefully it will help more teams get their work in

work table Nov 22, 2009

He covered the resiliency angle very well. While inherently secure, as you know, security is always dependent on the implementation. Incidentally, this whole concept was seeded by a security requirement to begin with.

flash development Nov 25, 2009

Great opportunity for all developers and those who is engaged in those business.

Translation Service Dec 26, 2009

Excellent post. Thank you very much for taking the time to share with those who are starting on the subject. Greetings.

JCramer Dec 29, 2009

“Cisco is holding a contest for Linux developers as a way to familiarize them with its Network as a Platform concept…”

Do you have a link to this contest?

Custom Dog Tags For Dogs Jan 27, 2010

Any chance there will be a similar contest in 2010?

logo designs Feb 3, 2010

what about this year..any news?

Shashi Kiran Feb 3, 2010

@JCCramer: Contest link is http://www.cisco.com/go/thinkinside

@CustomDog and @Logo Designs - Sorry, so far no plans for a similar contest this year, but then, who knows?