A simple and easy way to design, provision and manage the services you trust on any platform
Recall a situation where you were stuck in a traffic jam. While waiting, you see on your GPS another road paralleled to your existing one, empty with no cars at all. Didn’t you wish you could cross over to that empty road? Imagine the ability to create an exit right at that instant and spot, which would enable you to bypass the traffic jam and get back to the main road ahead. That is exactly what Network Functions Virtualization (#NFV) will enable you to do in your network.
NFV will enable you to spin up a new network service in minutes to solve a business need, then take it down when it is not required anymore. As Allison Park wrote in her recent blog, NFV is not just for service providers. Enterprises can also take advantage of NFV and enjoy the same benefits such as: Continue reading “What Is Cisco Enterprise NFV? (Enterprise #NFV)”
It’s been a year since Comcast commented on the importance of Segment Routing in an announcement we made at MPLS World Congress 2015. The topic sparked even more interest after Dave Ward’s keynote (see featured content) at this very same event.
Since then, Segment Routing is a top-of-mind topic and innovative use cases are popping up all over. The most recent one comes from Wolfe.net where they are using Segment Routing to simplify and speed up their delivery of MPLS to the customer edge.
Here at the RSA Conference 2016, the theme this year is Connect to Protect. It is a fitting theme for a gathering of security professionals, given the widespread adoption of cloud and mobile technologies that make doing business and sharing information easier than ever. The need for securing data regardless of where it resides and is consumed thus becomes paramount. In my recent discussions with fellow conference attendees, a common thread has emerged: a major impediment to protecting data in the cloud and on mobile devices is usability. This need for end users to walk a tightrope between security of data and usability of the technologies that ensure efficient access to secured data has confounded IT professionals for years – requiring multiple steps for a recipient to read an encrypted email, for example, can frustrate users and lead them to seek less secure alternatives.
Have you read about Cisco’s DNA (Digital Network Architecture) announcement? In a nutshell, it is how the network will evolve into a platform that can keep up with the dynamic needs of digital business models, and ultimately –through analytics- even anticipate them.
As such, Network Programmability, accessible through intuitive APIs, is a key cornerstone of the DNA architecture. This week, we launched the DevNet DNA Network Programmability Dev Center, a resource tailored to the needs of network engineers and application developers that want to build innovative applications and integrations with DNA APIs. It is a repository for the APIs we offer at the 3 different layers of the DNA architecture, namely, from the bottom up:
Device Programmability via RESTful interfaces, NETCONF-YANG, RESTCONF.
SDN Controllers like APIC-EM.
Automation, Orchestration and Management tools such as Prime Infrastructure, Application Visibility and Control (AVC) or the WAN Automation Engine (WAE).
For most colleges with multiple campuses, connecting separate locations is a challenge, but Central Georgia Technical College (CGTC), located in Macon, GA, faces a taller order than most: its campus systems extends across 12 counties that total the size of Delaware state!
To address lower-than-average student retention rates CGTC decided to reevaluate its teaching model. In the past, the college allowed students to take courses via traditional face-to-face instruction, online courses, or a hybrid model of the latter and former. However, students were not allowed to switch options, so when a student’s schedule changed for any reason, many were forced to drop classes altogether. This issue affected CGTC’s retention rate and limited students’ academic opportunities.
To address its instruction model, the school developed a new educational model called BlendFlex learning.
Earlier this month, Cisco launched the IT Component of North Carolina for Military Employment (NC4ME), hosting two IT Awareness Days at Camp Lejuene and Fort Bragg in North Carolina. More than 120 transitioning or recently transitioned Service members attended the events, where they learned about North Carolina’s growing IT industry.
Service members have the technical expertise and soft skills — like leadership and teamwork —that employers seek. But often, they do not know how to make connections or brand themselves appropriately for civilian jobs. The IT Awareness Days gave them the chance to do just that.
Cisco volunteers shared career tips with transitioning service members in North Carolina
Fourteen Cisco volunteers shared information on top IT careers and provided resume writing and interview tips at both locations. Attendees received a warm welcome from base commanders, including Lieutenant General Gary McKissock and Major General Jefforey A. Smith.
Let’s recap a couple key points from part 1 of this blog series. Digitization is having a huge impact on business. Applications play a major role in this impact because they represent the key point of interface between business and customer. Applications are essentially the reason Data Centers exist. Traditional applications are being deconstructed into microservices on containers that rapidly appear, disappear, and are moved around private and public clouds. These disruptive shifts have implications on both how and what IT architects, deploys, operates as well as troubleshoots. For more on how, see these links regarding announcements that address how we are automating/managing private and hybrid clouds with CliQr, Nexus Fabric Manager and DCNM 10.0. The rest of this blog will discuss the what, i.e. the switching infrastructure.
The trends above lead to several challenges that switches need to address. This 3 minute video from Brad Casemore of IDC succinctly addresses these issues:
A more detailed white paper complements the video and highlights how Cisco’s innovation creates differentiated value for customers addressing these challenges. It’s also an excellent summary of key issues in the industry today…Highly recommended reading. Excerpts from the paper (in italics) are included below.
One of the underlying principles is that the switching ASIC is the single largest factor influencing switch cost, performance, functional capability, and power consumption. Furthermore, the new Cisco ASICs effectively address challenges resulting from the trends above, which, as we discussed in part 2 of this series, include scale, telemetry, capacity, and intelligence. So let’s address some of the questions raised in that post.
Scale
The … use of containers and microservices will have repercussions for network scale. Cisco is responding by leveraging the expanded transistor capacity of its next-generation switch ASIC for increased route and end host scale. The paper goes on to show how the new switches offer double, triple, quadruple, and in some cases more, scale than that of competitive switches.
Telemetry
As servers moved from bare metal to virtual machines, it became more challenging to know the location of a given server or to be fully on top of what it was doing. These challenges are only exacerbated with containers, as there are more servers moving faster. As a result, knowing what is happening with the infrastructure and the apps that run on it means there is a need for more information and to get at that information faster. Full flow visibility for every packet has not been available on any datacenter switch for the past decade because the costs to provide the required bandwidth and table scalability were prohibitive. With its new ASIC technology, Cisco is able to provide full flow information and increase the amount of flow telemetry almost fivefold at reduced cost.
Capacity
Containers and microservices also will drive a need for greater bandwidth and less oversubscription. Cisco is responding with bandwidth per rack unit (RU) that is more cost effective than that provided by merchant silicon–based switches. Cisco is offering 25G at the price of 10G, and 100G and the price of 40G. Joe Onisick addressed this quite concisely when he tweeted:
“Want future proof? How about buy a 25/100G switch from me today, for the price my competition sells 10/40G for over the next 2 years.”
Intelligence
As the trends above yield more types of traffic, e.g. distributed storage, more active/mobile endpoints, etc., it becomes more important to have the intelligence to effectively handle and deliver this traffic. To do this the new Cisco ASIC technology also delivers several enhanced queuing and traffic management features. It is beyond the space we have here and, more pointedly, beyond my mental capacity, to elucidate all the mechanics of how this happens, but if you have questions, leave a comment below and I can dig up specific papers/references with additional detail from people whose propellers spin so fast they are used in wind tunnels to test drag coefficients.
Summary
Digitization is driving massive change in business, with applications, and in the Data Center. This change must be reflected in both how IT operates (think software and automation) and what IT operates (think hardware and infrastructure). Cisco announced major news in both. The new switching innovations address these changes and provide value to Cisco’s customers in a way that is unique in the industry.
Today International Trade Commission Administrative Law Judge (ALJ), David Shaw released the 294-page public version of his ruling in the first of two patent infringement cases involving Arista that Cisco had initiated at the ITC. Today’s ruling follows last week’s publication of his proposed remedies.
These important documents lay out the intentional nature of Arista’s infringement of key Cisco patents, many of which go to the heart of the Arista’s product operation. They also confirm that Arista must modify their products so they don’t infringe (which Arista says it is attempting to do), or remove infringing products from the marketplace. The rulings also state clearly that in the Judge’s view, an exclusion order and cease-and-desist order are the appropriate remedies to address Arista’s unlawful conduct. These remedies cover and apply to Arista’s entire line of switches.
Here’s a brief summary of the content of these rulings:
The Remedies ruling, knows as the “Recommended Determination” (RD)
The RD is crystal clear. Judge Shaw recommends that, “the Commission should issue a limited exclusion order covering products and components thereof that infringe the asserted claims.” No exception has been made for the service or support of products already in the United States, or for allowing components to be imported that could be used to build Arista’s infringing products.
The ruling on the claims of infringement, known as the “Initial Determination” (ID)
In Judge Shaw’s thorough analysis, resulting from the review of thousands of pages of supporting evidence and a two-week hearing, the following findings stand out:
For Cisco’s Sysdb patent, which covers portions of Arista’s products that Arista’s CEO described as the company’s “secret sauce”:
• Page 83 – “Arista’s actions indicate that it had specific intent to encourage infringement.”
• Page 85 – Testimony of Arista’s senior leadership “establishes that Arista was willfully blind to Cisco’s patented technology, thereby showing knowledge and specific intent to cause infringement of the asserted patents.”
• Page 86 – “Arista’s witnesses have testified that its customers use Sysdb each and every time they operate the Accused ‘537 Products, and that Arista intends for customers to use the Arista devices this way.”
• Page 87 – “Arista knowingly induces infringement by encouraging, instructing, and enabling third parties to use the Accused Products in a manner that infringes the asserted claims of the ‘537 [Sysdb] patent.”
For Cisco’s Private VLAN patents:
• Page 201 – “Arista knowingly induces infringement by encouraging, instructing, and enabling third parties to use the Accused Products in a manner that infringes the asserted claims of the ’592 and ‘145 patents.”
Next Steps
The ‘944 ruling is now subject to confirmation by the full Commission, after which any exclusion order will proceed to Presidential Review. The challenging ITC review process for any new product designs is already in place. And the recommended exclusion order will take effect after Presidential Review is completed on August 9. As a separate matter, on April 26 Administrative Law Judge McNamara will release her Initial Determination in the second ITC investigation (‘945). That case involves six additional patents not covered in Judge Shaw’s ruling.
Cisco’s goal has always been to protect our innovation, and to stop Arista from copying our patented technology. In light of Judge Shaw’s findings and recommendations released today, we are well on our way to doing just that.
Last week at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Ericsson announced plans with business and technology partner Cisco to support 3 Italia’s mobile IP backbone network transformation. The two industry leaders will combine their expertise to deploy and integrate a variety of technologies and services that will meet 3 Italia’s increasing data traffic demands and pave the way for 5G.
