The Lippis Report

June 7th, 2011

In Lippis Report 172, I mentioned three huge trends that are starting to interact with each other creating a perfect storm that is gripping the tech industry. One of those trends is the creation of a software ecosystem in the networking market, thanks to the Clean Slate program out of Stanford University that has spawned the Software Defined Network (SDN) initiative and open controller protocol called OpenFlow. I spent a week in the Valley talking to people at Stanford and many industry executives from Cisco, Juniper, Marvell, Big Switch, Nicira, Arista, IBM and others. In this Lippis Report Research Note, I share with you what I learned. OpenFlow-based SDN is being both hyped and in its current state, limited, but it does represent a new paradigm that has the industry abuzz, filled with possibilities.

Read the rest of this entry »

May 24th, 2011

Three strong trends are taking shape that are so powerful they threaten the status quo of the networking industry. These trends are more like storms than new markets; in fact they represent a major industry discontinuity. The first storm is happening now and is represented by merchant silicon for 10 and 40 GbE chips lowering the barrier of entry for new entrants in the Ethernet switch market. The second storm is much weaker but promises to be just as big, or bigger, than the first. This second storm is the creation of a software ecosystem in the networking industry, thanks to initiatives such as Software Defined Networks (SDN), OpenFlow, Arista Network’s EOS Central, etc. The third storm is the paradigm shift in enterprise IT spending thanks to mobile and cloud computing. These three storms are starting to interact and feed upon each other, forming a perfect storm in the networking industry. The perfect storm is already doing damage, as all major IT firms position product portfolios to navigate through it and prepare for its aftermath of making existing networking legacy.

Read the rest of this entry »

March 28th, 2011

In the Lippis Report, we have discussed the fundamental changes shaping a new data center network architecture. These drivers are massive virtualization, a sea change in traffic patterns that are now dominated with east-west flows on top of existing north-south traffic, ultra low latency, the emergence of cloud spec data centers, etc. As a result, data center networking attributes are changing with requirements of traffic, steering in virtualized infrastructure, avoiding manual network changes as VMs move, removing oversubscription (thanks to spanning tree), streamlining network tiers to hasten east-west traffic flows, etc. The industry is responding to these changes and requirements with new approaches to data center networking, such as the Open Networking Foundation, Cisco’s FabricPath, Juniper’s QFabric, Brocade’s VCS, Avaya’s VENA, Nicira Networks’ network virtualization software, etc. In this Lippis Report Research Note, we explore a key technology to enabling two-tier network fabrics, and that’s link aggregation and its various approaches, including Multi-Chassis Link Aggregation Group, Transparent Interconnection of Lots of Links (TRILL) and Shortest Path Bridging (SPB).

Read the rest of this entry »

March 28th, 2011

By BLADE Networking Technologies, an IBM Company

Today, virtualization, cloud computing and high frequency trading place new demands on the system network fabric to deliver non-stop, ultra low-latency traffic flows. This traffic is increasingly “east-west” in nature to enable machine-to-machine communications versus the “north-south” traffic that characterizes conventional client/server and Web-based application environments. To deliver this east-west traffic using the most efficient flows, large flat networks are becoming increasingly popular. These flat Layer 2 networks eliminate extra hops to decrease latency, do not block any paths across the network, and are simple to configure. Such flat networks are built with large numbers of inexpensive top-of-rack switches, scale horizontally by simply adding more switches, and enable VLANs to span across a data center to provide larger server pools for virtualization. TRILL or TRansparent Interconnection of Lots of Links is fundamental to IBM’s approach and is explained in this white paper.

March 15th, 2011

Cisco recently launched its SecureX architecture that extends perimeter-based network security to secure modern IT, recognizing the huge growth in mobile and cloud computing. SecureX is a multi-layer architecture built upon Cisco’s AnyConnect client, its global footprint in real-time threat intelligence found in SIO (Security Intelligence Operation), Cisco TrustSec, including policy servers of NAC manager and server appliances, ASA firewall and the security enforcement features of its switches and routers. SecureX is an architecture to Cisco’s network security products and service to work together in an effort to create deeper defenses and contain exploit infestation if, and when, they occur. Fundamental to SecureX is the concept of “context aware” policy across the enterprise, including remote endpoint devices, centralized policy creation with distributed security device and network enforcement. SecureX provides for innovation injection points through APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) for management and SIEM or Security Information and Event Management. In this Lippis Report Research Note, we explore SecureX with a focus on how context increases defenses and keeps IT assets safer.

Read the rest of this entry »

March 15th, 2011

By Jon Oltsik, Principal Analyst at the Enterprise Strategy Group

Say “identity management” and what usually comes to mind is LDAP directories, strong authentication and Single Sign-On (SSO) systems. These technologies are used for access to Windows networks, e-mail and other internal applications. Generally, network identity is associated with IP and MAC addresses, VLAN tags and subnets. It also plays a role in security in areas like device authentication, VPNs and IPSEC. ESG believes that the historical differences and separation between application- and network-layer identity no longer make sense. This white paper describes why and proposes a new model for identity-aware networking.

March 15th, 2011

By Clabby Analytics

Other reseach and analysis firms seem to see IBM’s acquisition of BLADE Network Technologies (BLADE) as a competitive response to
Hewlett-Packard’s acquisition of 3Com and Cisco’s entry into the blade server business, but there’s much more to this deal than competitive dynamics. Clabby Analytics believes that data center virtualization is accelerating, and the demand for more I/O per server is on the rise. Additionally, networks are converging around a single Ethernet wiring plant. These industry changes are the true driving factors in this deal.

In this Research Report, Clabby Analytics examines what the acquisition of BLADE could mean to IBM and its customers. We take a closer look at the DCB convergence that is taking place in the networking marketplace; we examine why virtualization logic at the network level makes sense; and we discuss what this acquisition may mean from a competitive positioning perspective. Finally, we conclude that now is an ideal time for IBM to re-enter the networking business.

March 15th, 2011

By Cisco Systems

According to the Wi-Fi Alliance, about 200 million households use Wi-Fi networks, and there are about 750,000 Wi-Fi hotspots worldwide. Wi-Fi is used by over 700 million people, and there are about 800 million new Wi-Fi devices every year. Cisco has shipped over 10 million access points worldwide. In this white paper, Cisco details how Wi-Fi hotspots are changing to accommodate cellular offload of iPhones, iPads and Android devices.

March 15th, 2011

By Cisco Systems

There are three major trends sweeping through the enterprise: the rapid rise of the consumerized endpoint, the onset of virtualization and cloud computing, and the growing use of high-definition video conferencing. Each of these critical technologies is transforming business—and forcing a fundamental shift in how security is developed and deployed. In this white paper, Cisco describes its SecureX architecture and how it has evolved IT security so that IT leaders can enjoy the benefits of these IT trends securely.

February 28th, 2011

The data center switching market is heating up. To address the scale issues posed by mobile and cloud computing nearly every network vendor is launching its own version of a 10/40/100 GbE fabric to connect servers and storage to the internet. At the heart of this fabric is a two-tier (Fat-Tree) network made up of leaf/ToR and spine/Core switches. Here leafs connect servers and spines connect leafs while also being interconnected in a logical mesh. The protocols to create this logical mesh are based upon IS-IS link state routing, but each vendor is taking a unique approach with Cisco using its FastPath, Alcatel-Lucent and Avaya using SPB (802.1aq Shortest Path Bridging) while Brocade VDX is based upon TRILL (Transparent Interconnection of Lots of Links). Juniper recently announced QFabric but has not detailed what it’s using for logical meshing. At the center of new data center design are leaf and spine switches. In Lippis Report Research Note 166, we detailed the latest ToR switches. In this Lippis Report Research Note 167, we dive into performance and power consumption measurements plus the use of SPB of Alcatel-Lucent’s OmniSwitch 10K, a new entry into spine/core data center switching market.

Read the rest of this entry »

February 28th, 2011

By Cisco Systems

Deploying network services in virtual data centers is extremely challenging. Traditionally, such Layer 4 through 7 services relied on intrusive, inline deployment and static network topologies. They were thus completely at odds with highly scalable virtual data center designs with mobile workloads, on-demand virtual machine (VM) provisioning, and strict service-level agreements (SLAs).

Cisco® Unified Network Services (UNS) addresses all of these problems by creating a framework for multiple services that can be configured and provisioned on demand, dynamically, to suit the service needs of enterprise applications and cloud users. This dramatically reduces network management overhead, allowing for a much more agile data center and business while providing improved application performance and a secure infrastructure. Cisco UNS comprises Cisco’s industry-leading solutions for virtual data centers that deliver.

● Load balancing and application controllers
● WAN acceleration
● Network security
● Network analysis and monitoring

February 14th, 2011

During December 6-10, 2010, the Lippis Report and Ixia conducted the industry’s first 10GbE data center switching evaluation of Top-of-Rack and Core Ethernet switches at the modern iSimCity lab in Santa Clara, CA. We evaluated Alcatel-Lucent’s OmniSwitch 10K, Arista’s 7504 Series Data Center Switch, BLADE Network Technologies’, an IBM Company, IBM BNT RackSwitch G8124 and IBM BNT RackSwitch G8264, Force10 Network’s S-Series S4810, Hitachi Cable’s Apresia 15000-64XL-PSR, Juniper Network’s EX Series EX8216 Ethernet Switch and Voltaire®’s Vantage™ 6048. We are conducting a second round of test scheduled for the week of April 4-8 at iSimCity, and it is open to all suppliers of 10GbE data center switching. We learned a lot about these products, both in the lab and out. In this Lippis Report Research Note, we dive into the Top-of-Rack 10GbE switches we tested as they represent a new generation of products that exhibit low power consumption, low latency, high performance and are all based upon new single chip designs from Broadcom, Marvell or Fulcrum Micro.

Read the rest of this entry »

February 14th, 2011

By Ken Won, Director of Product Marketing at Force10 Networks

Server and storage environments have seen a lot of changes in the past ten years, while developments in networking have remained fairly static. Now, the demands of virtualization and network convergence are driving significant changes in the data center network. Networks have always been considered as plumbing that connect servers and storage, but new, dynamic switches are changing the network’s role in the overall data center. It’s not your father’s network anymore, and savvy data center managers need to understand and plan for the changes that are coming.

This white paper discusses new network technologies, explains what they are, and suggests how to plan for them in future data center architectures.

February 14th, 2011

by Cisco Systems

Cisco® Borderless Networks is a next-generation architecture that helps IT evolve its infrastructure to deliver seamless, secure and reliable access in a world with many new and shifting borders. The Cisco Integrated Services Routers Generation 2 (ISR G2) constitute a critical component of the Cisco Borderless Network Architecture and deliver performance requirements for the next generation of WAN and network services, enabling the cost-effective delivery of high-definition collaboration at the branch office, and providing a secure transition to the next generation of cloud and virtualized network services. This white paper discusses the concept of integrated services as they apply to the branch-office router, and how they help to enable the borderless branch office for small- to medium-sized business, large enterprises and service providers offering managed services.