NFD - Tag - Fryguy's Blog

Network Field Day 22

Fryguy — Wed, 22 Jan 2020 11:59:00 +0000

Happy Days have returned! I have been invited to attend Network Field Day #22 (#NFD22) in San Jose, CA on February 12-14, 2020. If you are unfamiliar with Network Field Day, it is an event that is organized by Gestalt IT Media, LLC and brings together vendors along with independent bloggers (delegates). You can find more information over at their Tech Field Day website.

The list of delegates for this event is, as always, impressive. I am really honored to be part of this event and to be included among this group of individuals. Below you will see a list of the delegates for NFD22 along with a link to their Tech Field Day bio page and their social media. What to be a Tech Field Day Delegate, just visit this link and go for it!

Networking Field Day Exclusive with Cisco Service Provider

Fryguy — Fri, 11 Jan 2019 19:35:30 +0000

On Tuesday of next week (15-Jan-2019) I will be part of an amazing group of people who are lucky enough to meet with Cisco’s Service Provider team.

This event will be streamed over on the Tech Field Day website. Some of the topics that Cisco will be presenting on include:

Network Field Day 15

Fryguy — Wed, 05 Apr 2017 12:08:42 +0000

I just wanted to do a quick post on Networking Field Day 15, which is TODAY!
If you are not familiar with Tech Field Day outings, let me take a moment to explain it to you from my understanding. Tech Field Day is designed to bring together independent IT professionals and vendors. The goal of this get-together is to both educate the delegate, who in turns educates their readers and educate the vendor as to what the market is doing.
The Delegate has the opportunity to listen to the presentations, ask independent questions, and learn about new technologies. The Vendor has the opportunity to educate brilliant IT individuals, explain their product to many who may be unfamiliar with it, as well as gain valuable feedback from industry respected individuals. It’s a win-win for all!

OpenFlow and SDN from the Symposiom

Fryguy — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 16:02:43 +0000

On October 26th I attended the OpenFlow Symposium in San Jose, CA hosted by Packet Pushers and TechFieldDay at the DoubleTree San Jose. The purpose of this symposium was to help gain more exposure to OpenFlow as well as discuss what some of the major players see and feel about the technology. In attendance was representatives from Big Switch Networks, Brocade, Cisco, Google, Juniper, NEC, and Yahoo!. They each were allowed to present their views and feelings and then the panel was opened up for discussion and questions.
My take was that Google and Yahoo! are big into this technology as they have the most to gain from it. They run warehouse size data centers all over the world, and this type of technology has a huge benefit to them as it means they can develop their own controllers and control merchant silicon, thus releasing them from relying on other vendors network hardware to support their data center. Not only that, but they can help prioritize and track individual flows based on what the user is doing. For example – a person who is placing items in their carts and heading to checkout can have a higher priority flow over someone just looking around. The speed to finish the transaction is important to them, not to mention they can also secure that traffic in the network differently then a person who is just looking.

OpenFlow

Fryguy — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 17:41:38 +0000

An OpenFlow Symposium was held in San Jose, CA on October 26th, 2011 and hosted by by PacketPushers.Net and TechFieldDay.Com. This was my first true exposure to the OpenFlow protocol and concepts of SDN (Software Designed Networking), and it was a great exposure.
If you are not familiar with OpenFlow or SDN, please let me take a moment and give you a brief overview and a quick scenario. OpenFlow is a way in which you can have a application – called a Controller – maintain and control switch flow tables. This controller is aware of all flows in the topology of its domain, the domain being the switches/ports that it controls. Yes, you can have specific ports on a switch controlled via the controller, and all the other ports as part of a normal network that is controlled via the switch. OpenFlow will have no impact to the other ports, they will continue to operate just like nothing was different.
A good use case for OpenFlow is Multi-Path Layer 2 switching in a data center or other high bandwidth location. With normal multi-patch technologies one of the links is blocked via STP, thus sitting idle just waiting for the primary link to fail. With OpenFlow, the controller is aware of all paths in the network and able to load the traffic accordingly. Lets take a look at the following diagram:

Tech Field Day – Network Field Day #2

Fryguy — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 12:01:15 +0000

I just got my invitation to the next Tech Field Day, well actually Network Field Day #2, and I cannot tell you how excited I am, as well as humbled to be asked to attend.
My first experience with Tech Field Day was back in February of this year when I attended Tech Field Day #5. That event was more data center focused and was something that I will never forget. I learned quite a bit about a lot of technologies and companies that I was not overly familiar with. It was amazing to see how far some of the technology has come so fast, it was just mind melting. There where some topics that where right up my alley with regards to expertise, and those I learned even more about. It was an experience that I was hoping I would get a chance to experience again, and thankfully I will.