Plnog

it seems Google decided to reach out to wider community and use the freely available network stack for it’s own MPLS prototyping. the effect is complete MPLS LSR prototype described during recent NANOG 50 talk that’s also available as video. of course it’s quite interesting to see Google experimenting with that kind of solutions - maybe it will be connected to OpenFlow as non-academic exercise? will it become mainstay of new service provider networks? let’s talk about it during next, march edition of PLNOG. ...

for some time Jim Gettys on his blog is writing a lot about problems caused by buffers, queues and other congestion avoidance mechanisms. you should really read about them. especially, if you’re in this group that believes big buffers solve all of the problems, and dropping traffic is absolute evil. nowadays it should be treated as absolutely normal thing - in most of the real life cases. on the upcoming, sixth PLNOG we may be able to tackle this problem (if there will be space in agenda), and have a shot at myths and legends related to network QoS. and yes, agenda will be out there soon, we’re just closing down last preparations. ...

i was stubborn - and while from the very first moment we’ve had a lot of challenges with the hotel infrastructure, i was able to run xTR routers during last PLNOG for LISP. no, it’s not about programming Cisco routers with LISP, but about new concept of Location/ID Split, that is new concept enabling you to treat traffic engineering in internet differently. in short - we still serve traffic like we always did (backward compatibility), but by assigning users and companies IPv4 and IPv6 addressing from special pools, we can treat this traffic in a different manner. LISP is de facto overlay network concept. this itself is nothing revolutionary, but on the other hand - it’s first such network that got wide adoption in world-wide internet. why would you like to use LISP? apart from ability to conserve IP addresses, LISP gives you ability to do traffic engineering without use of BGP or involving third parties. and in effect, adopting it may mean less FIB space needed on core internet routers. ...

during upcoming PLNOG i’ll cover two relatively new features available in Cisco gear. LISP which stands for Locator/ID SPlit is first, deployed and available both commercially and as open source code) solution that can enable internet to scale out without further growth of routing table size. it also brings advanced traffic engineering capabilities to pure IP networks. LISP was invented and is being actively developed by Cisco employees, working in different teams across research and development departaments. architecture itself is however open and fully documented. it’s very universal, and provides additional ability to merge IPv4 and IPv6 or provide seamless coexistence. it also supports multicast. LISP is not only interesting tool or vendor trick, right now it is being used by Google and Facebook. what’s actually interesting in Facebook case, during last major outage of interatlantic links, some of the internet accessing Facebook was accessing it over LISP proxy http://www.lisp4.facebook.com - in fully transparent, and essentially invisible for typical user way. LISP is also obviously used by Cisco and being integrated into our products. ...

fifth PLNOG edition is coming in on 21st and 22nd of october this year. this time we’ll have Merike Kaeo delivering keynote session. her topic of choice? security - suprising, isn’t it? :P as you can imagine we’re buttoning up agenda and it will be published soon. in the meantime, we already have over 200 attendees registered, which is great result given you still don’t know what you’ll be able to see :) ...

for all those of you concerned with vanishing of BGP blackholing PL project page - please calm down. we’re moving. current page is here. in other news, i’ll host discussion panel on upcoming PLNOG 2009. we’ll touch on blackholingu and other best practices to increase security of internet infrastructure. i’ll be joined by Konrad Plich from TP SA and polish CERT representatives.

in a month from now, we’ll be launching first edition of PLNOG conference. we’re working to deliver a lot of interesting sessions. apart from many abroad presenters, we’ll host also our own, polish specialists. you’ll have a chance to meet Wojtek Apel (3S), Tomasz Paszkowski (nasza-klasa.pl) and Marcin Mazurek (Allegro.pl). somewhere in the agenda there’s also my session about MPLS Traffic Engineering. before that, on Saturday and Sunday, I’ll deliver hands-on workshops on BGP and MPLS. each willing participant will work on his/her own pod full of virtual Cisco IOS devices. ...

summer holidays are in full swing - starting from 26th of July i’ll be running Cisco Academy courses at PROIDEA for CCNP. everyone who’s eager to have a good time learning and discussing technologies (way outside of official curriculum) should immediately contact academy reception. independently of that, we have two large conferences coming. at Cisco Expo 2008 i will deliver sessions on network architecture that minimizes the chances of becoming a victim of a DDoS attack and becoming part of botnet. i’ll mention attacks over 10Gbps, DDoS “to go”, encrypted p2p and multiple ways to minimize damage - including using our Cisco gear to help. ...