Everything You Need to Know About 100 Gigabit Ethernet Modules in a Nutshell
Since the IEEE 802.3ad standard was approved on June 17, 2010 we’ve seen a lot of development in the 100 GbE market. Starting in 2010 and throughout 2011, shipping 1st generation media modules, test...
View ArticleBrocade Next Generation Broadband Reference Architecture
I’d like to share our latest service provider solution – The Next Generation Broadband Architecture. This solution focuses on the advantages of active carrier Ethernet technologies; basically replacing...
View ArticleGetting Back to the Security Basics
I am a lover of those great guy-centric action flicks, like Terminator or Die Hard, and I was recently watching one of my favorites, Ronin, when a particular set of lines, as can be only delivered by...
View ArticleWhat’s Next for 100 Gigabit Ethernet?
2011 was a very exciting year for us, as we started shipping the industry’s first 2-port 100 GbE card for our Brocade MLX Series routers last summer. We saw a lot of demand for 100 GbE from customers...
View ArticleInnovation: Multi-Chassis Trunking with VPLS
This is a great opportunity for me to introduce a really cool and highly anticipated feature that is part of the Brocade NetIron 5.3 Software Release. The official release date for this software is...
View ArticleThe Brocade OpenScript Engine: Carrier-Grade Flexibility for Scalable and...
We just announced software release 12.4 for the ADX which has a number of key features for service providers: the OpenScript engine, double the IPv6 performance, an XML management API, and a really...
View ArticleThe Blind Don’t Make Great Visual Inspections
There is a great quote by a French filmmaker named Robert Bresson that says, “make visible what, without you, might perhaps never have been seen". What the Frenchman states, though tied to film, is a...
View ArticleNANOG54 100 Gigabit Demo: IP/MPLS Services Over 100 Gbps Ethernet and Optical...
The 54th North American Network Operators' Group (NANOG) technical service provider conference took place last week on February 5-8, 2012 in San Diego, CA. We had packed agenda with many excellent...
View ArticleNetIron MPLS/RSVP Automatic-Bandwidth LSPs
While considering what to write about for this blog, after my previous blog about a really cool NetIron 5.3 feature, I thought I’d stick with that trend for now and talk about another highly...
View ArticleThe “Future” of Service Delivery Platform is Here!
Do we really want to come to the inevitable truth that the future is not what we want it to be? The thought of knowing what lies ahead is truly a "drug." Innovation has come in various forms since the...
View ArticleA Perspective on Router Architecture Challenges – Part 1: Memory
In this two-part blog I’ll be expanding on my conference presentations that I’ve given at NANOG53 and APRICOT 2012 to introduce some of the router architecture challenges that we’re facing from the...
View ArticleFPGA or ASIC? Pro's & Con's of Each Technology
I’d like to follow Greg’s great blog from last week with a related topic. Like his blog, this blog will be focused on router hardware (unlike my previous blogs which were NetIron software related). The...
View ArticleA Perspective on Router Architecture Challenges – Part 2: ASICs
This the second part of my blog about some of the router architecture challenges that we’re facing from the perspective of a router vendor. In the first part I talked about lookup and buffer memory...
View ArticleOpen Networking Summit (ONS) - Preview
I’d like to briefly talk about the upcoming ONS event taking place on April 16 - 18 in Santa Clara, CA. For those who aren’t familiar with the ONS, it is the premier event for OpenFlow and Software...
View ArticleOpen Networking Summit (ONS) - Recap
So.... the ONS was, in a nutshell, fascinating, eventful, thought provoking, inspiring, and perhaps most importantly - REAL! I would like to start off with the following quote from the early morning...
View ArticleMetamorphosis: Movement becomes Market
My day job is focused on OpenFlow. I began ramping up on the SDN technology before last year’s launch of the Open Networking Foundation, the organization that now oversees OpenFlow standards...
View ArticleInterop Las Vegas 2012
Interop Las Vegas 2012 started on May 6th at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, and there are a lot of exciting demos and talks to look forward to. Fabric networks seems to be akey message with a lot of energy...
View ArticleOpenFlow Coming to MLX and CES/CER
The upcoming Multi-Service IronWare software release 5.4 for NetIron Family of Routers for MLX, XMR, CES, and CER will support OpenFlow version 1.0. These will be the first carrier-grade systems to...
View ArticleSoftware Defined Networks (SDN) and Security
Do you know the real story of Private Ryan, immortalized in the Tom Hanks movie, Saving Private Ryan? The movie is loosely based on the factual account of the Niland Brothers, specifically the...
View ArticleLoad Balancing is Back… and it’s bringing the “SDN All-Star” team
Courtessy of Ronald Martinez/Getty Images, (as listed at Miami Heat Win Title: Time for LeBron James' Critics to Move on | Bleacher Report) With much criticism after the Miami Heat lost to the Dallas...
View ArticleEnabling Service Providers to New Revenue Streams: Introduction to New...
To help service providers and network operators better understand the IaaS market opportunity, Brocade commissioned WaveLength Market Analytics to conduct an online study of large and medium-sized...
View ArticleNew Book: “Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet”
Instead of writing about some sort of exciting network technology in my blog this time, I decided to write about a really interesting book that was just published recently. The book is called “Tubes:...
View ArticleEnabling Service Providers to New Revenue Streams: Enterprises Plan for IPv6...
With less than 2% of IPv4 addresses remaining, enterprises are currently planning strategies for IPv6 translation. Where exactly are enterprises in their IPv6 translation pursuits? What solutions are...
View ArticleEnabling Service Providers to New Revenue Streams: Enterprises Seek SAN...
In this week's blog on new Brocade-enabling service provider revenue opportunities, I examine storage area network (SAN) extension services. This emerging new service is designed to overcome...
View ArticleStandardization of SDN solutions ... Are we there yet?
I thought I’d take an opportunity to write about and hopefully update folks on some recent happenings in the Software Defined Networking (SDN) space as it relates to standards bodies, such as the...
View ArticleEnabling Service Providers to New Revenue Streams: Expect Strong Demand for...
As every service provider already knows, performance and reliability are always high priorities for enterprise IT. Add cloud computing to the mix, its importance multiplies. In this week’s blog, I...
View ArticleEnabling Service Providers to New Revenue Streams: VDI and Compute-as-a-Service
In previous blogs through this series, I have addressed large market opportunities about infrastructure services offering service providers significant new revenue sources. These IaaS services include...
View ArticleEnabling Service Providers to New Revenue Streams: Enterprise Buying Behaviors
Throughout my past 5 blog posts, I have reported on enterprise demand for new infrastructure services. IPv6 translation, SAN extension, server load balancing-as-a-service, and hosted desktop services...
View ArticleEvolving SP WAN Architectures; how do routers keep up?
There are some interesting developments going on in service provider networks these days, to say the least. Besides all the OpenFlow and SDN hoopla, which is quite the hot topic right now, traditional...
View ArticleSDN – Operational Simplification with Greater Profitability
In an effort to find innovative service offerings, we have found that service providers are exploring many alternatives which include how they expose their network assets for profit. In addition, once...
View ArticleADX Virtualization for Multitenancy: Combining the Best of Both Worlds
My first experience with Application Delivery Controllers (ADCs) was way back when the market for this kind of purpose-built hardware was just developing. We had early access to Foundry’s software...
View ArticleInnovation: Routing Over VPLS with NetIron Software 5.4
Back in January of this year I wrote about a really cool NetIron feature called “MCT with VPLS”. That feature was released in the NetIron 5.3 software. Well, in the NetIron 5.4 software release (which...
View ArticleA Technical View of the 24-Port 10 GbE Module and MaxScale-160 ASIC
We announced the new 24-port 10 GbE module for the Brocade MLXe routers at our Analyst and Technology Day last month, and I’m really excited about the 3X increase in 10 GbE density that is now...
View ArticleOpenFlow/SDN & MPLS, Better Together or Mutually Exclusive?
There is much discussion these days in various industry forums and conferences about whether OpenFlow will replace MPLS. I guess this comes historically from the fact that ATM replaced Frame Relay...
View ArticleMaking Progress Toward 400 Gigabit Ethernet
I want to give you a quick overview and update on the industry’s progress toward 400 GbE as the next Ethernet speed. Though 100 GbE is only two years old, it’s important that we start working on the...
View ArticleResearch & Education Network (REN) Architecture: Science-DMZ
There are some interesting developments in the Research & Education Networks (RENs) space. While there is continued interest and innovation in the REN space around OpenFlow and SDN, there are some...
View Article100 Gigabit Ethernet Peering Goes Mainstream
Last year was another exciting year for 100 GbE as we saw several new technical developments and large deployments by service provider, data center, research and HPC network operators. Here's a quick...
View ArticleInnovation: Multicast over MCT
I’d like to continue a previous discussion about Brocades Multi-Chassis Trunking (MCT) technology. Please see the earlier blog: MCT with VPLS. The MCT w/VPLS capability was part of NetIron Software...
View ArticleThe Next Ethernet Technology Evolution Has Started: 400 GbE is Officially an...
It’s hard to believe that Ethernet is turning 40 this year, isn’t it? Since its conception by Bob Metcalfe and the team of engineers at XEROX PARC in the 1970s, Ethernet technology has continued to...
View ArticleIETF 86 Recap of SP Related Activities
I recently returned from IETF 86 and would like to update the folks in this community with a brief synopsis of the event. Overall, it was a very well attended, interactive and relevant event! But I...
View ArticleMetro Service Provider offering true Active Ethernet in Tennessee
There has been lots of recent discussion about Google and AT&T targeting to provide the city of Austin, TX with a 1-gigbit-per-second Internet service. While the competitive and innovative spirit...
View ArticleThe Physical: 40 GbE at the Core of the On-Demand Data Center
Today, Brocade announced it strategy to bridge the physical and virtual worlds of networking to enable customers to build an “On-Demand Data Center”. For service providers, an On-Demand Data Center...
View ArticleBGP as a Data Center IGP
As data center networks scale to support thousands of servers running a variety of different services, a new network architecture using the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) as a data center routing...
View ArticleNetIron sFlow Enhancements
sFlow is a very interesting technology that often gets overlooked in terms of network management, operations and performance. That’s a shame; as it can be a very powerful tool in the network operator’s...
View ArticleLayer 3 Routing Over MCT
Multi-Chassis Trunking (MCT) is a key Brocade technology that helps network operators build scalable and resilient networks, and we are continuing to add more enhancements to MCT that provide advanced...
View ArticleIETF 87 Recap of SP Related Activities
I recently returned from IETF 87 and would like to provide a brief synopsis of the event. First, who would have expected the weather to be that hot in Berlin? It hit 96F on Sunday, the first day of the...
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