Next-Gen Networks (NGN) Skills

In this blog post I am trying to explain what exactly is Next Generation Networks (NGN) & what are the skills required for working in NGN. For someone who already works in this domain, its easy & already understood. But for people who are either new or come from different domains, it’s a bit difficult … Continue reading Next-Gen Networks (NGN) Skills →

Kubernetes Service Mesh

With app modernization, big monolith applications are getting broken down into microservices. Earlier various components of the applications were communicating with each other inside a single server or VM. These application components were like different processes inside a single Operating System (OS) of that server & share one single TCP/IP stack (of the host OS) … Continue reading Kubernetes Service Mesh →

Networking in Kubernetes

Modern cloud native applications are deployed in containers to ensure portability & elasticity. These applications need to be agile, scalable & self-healing. Kubernetes (K8s) is an orchestration platform for automating the deployment and management of these containerized applications to fulfill these needs. These applications need some underlying infrastructure like compute, networking & storage for their … Continue reading Networking in Kubernetes →

SASE vs. SDWAN

Introduction to SASE Secure Access Service Edge or SASE is a term coined by Gartner in Aug 2019. Gartner defined SASE as a framework that recommends a cloud delivered (not on-prem or DC) WAN connectivity & security services platform for globally distributed workforce of an enterprise. With this definition, we can say that SASE is … Continue reading SASE vs. SDWAN →

SDWAN Architectures

There are a lot of SDWAN vendors & their product offerings in the market. Choosing one out of this crowded marketplace is really difficult. The decision depends on a variety of factors. In this blog, I will talk about one of the factors - that's the architecture of the SDWAN platform. First of all we … Continue reading SDWAN Architectures →

SDWAN Explained (in a Vendor Neutral way)

The traditional enterprise WAN architecture usually have a combination of transport networks – a private WAN network, mainly MPLS VPN’s, and a public WAN transport network i.e. internet. The MPLS transport network is managed by the Comms Service Provider (CSP). It builds a virtual private WAN network (VPN) for enterprises with assured performance backed up … Continue reading SDWAN Explained (in a Vendor Neutral way) →

Standardization Bodies in Network Engineering (Part-2 of 2)

Continuing from part-1, in this part we will see standardization bodies from cloud generation. Some common objectives of these standard bodies are to develop and promote open source, software driven, dis-aggregated**, programmable, dynamic and agile network platforms of future ! #*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#* OCP (Open Compute Project) : OCP organization started in 2011 with an objective to … Continue reading Standardization Bodies in Network Engineering (Part-2 of 2) →

Standardization Bodies in Network Engineering (Part-1 of 2)

Like all other engineering disciplines, network engineering also relies heavily on standards. These standards specify characteristics and technical details that must be met by the products, services, systems and processes that the standards cover. Standards provide uniformity, common specification & architecture across industry. These standards are developed by standardization bodies called as Standards Developing Organization … Continue reading Standardization Bodies in Network Engineering (Part-1 of 2) →

DevOps in practice

DevOps combines Development i.e. software engineering / coding AND Operations which is more of network / systems engineering. Although a network engineer is not supposed to completely turn into a software engineer or coder but it certainly need network engineer to gain coding skills to some extent (the more, the better) on top of his/her … Continue reading DevOps in practice →

List of major Network Operating Systems (NOS)

Cumulus Linux: is an open source Linux based NOS. It’s used for white box or bare metal or open switches. The Linux distribution used in Cumulus Linux is based on Debian & uses the full TCP/IP stack of Linux. So at its core it’s a Linux OS customised to run as NOS on any x86 … Continue reading List of major Network Operating Systems (NOS) →

Covid19 & SDWAN

During this time of Covid19 crisis & resultant global lockdown, irrespective of any vertical, industry or domain we all are supposed to work from home & keep the businesses running as much as we can. Even when the situation improves and offices reopen, we very well may be required to maintain social distancing at workplace. … Continue reading Covid19 & SDWAN →

The world of “Open” switches

With SDN, there is an increased interest in "Open" switches. The future of open networking lies in these open switches. They provide uniformity in IT ecosystem which makes centralised control and management easier and networks much more automation ready. The initial wave of open switch adoption was triggered by hyper scalers like Facebook and Google. … Continue reading The world of “Open” switches →

Python Libraries for Network Automation

Here are some Python libraries available for network device automation. It is forr those network devices or network operating systems (NOS) that do not natively support API based automation and CLI is the only way to interact with these devices/NOS. These libraries help users connect to and automate tasks on such network devices via Python … Continue reading Python Libraries for Network Automation →

Network Automation – Devices Readiness

As we are moving into the future, more & more things around us are getting digitized. We have already entered into the age of IOT (Internet of things) to some extent. This generates massive connectivity requirements which in turn is translating into requirement for bigger, wider and faster networks. Legacy ways of network deployment & … Continue reading Network Automation – Devices Readiness →

SDWAN overview & technology enablers

Network engineering has been lagging behind software engineering and IT infrastructure engineering (compute & storage) for quite some time. With SDN & SDWAN, its changing & network engineering is now catching up. Traditional WAN service kind of follows single monolithic architecture. SDWAN has decomposed the monolithic network service into loosely coupled collection of network micro-services. … Continue reading SDWAN overview & technology enablers →

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