What is so special about the new Software-Defined WAN concept besides the many marketing slogans like “Redefining Networks for Cloud era” or “Transport independent secure fabric” or where the “66% cost reduction” comes from? First of all, when we talk about SDWAN we can think of it as the practical enforcement of the Software-Defined Network (SDN) Read More
Category: Router/Switch
Understanding PIM Sparse Mode vs Dense Mode
Sparse-dense mode, as the name implies, allows the interface to operate on a per-group basis in either sparse or dense mode. A group specified as dense is not mapped to an RP. Instead, data packets destined for that group are forwarded by means of PIM dense-mode rules. A group specified as sparse is mapped to Read More
What Is Intent-based Networking (IBN)?
Intent-based networking (IBN) is an emerging technology concept that aims to apply a deeper level of intelligence and intended state insights to networking. Ideally, these insights replace the manual processes of configuring networks and reacting to network issues. Simply put, administrators can send a request to tell the network what outcome they want (their intent) instead Read More
Understanding SPAN,RSPAN,and ERSPAN
Introduction: Switch port Analyzer (SPAN) is an efficient, high performance traffic monitoring system. It duplicated network traffic to one or more monitor interfaces as it transverse the switch. SPAN is used for troubleshooting connectivity issues and calculating network utilization and performance, among many others. There are three types of SPANs supported on Cisco products, which Read More
100M Full-Duplex vs Auto-Negotiate.
Problem descriptions: I have a system running on an Intel pro VE running 100mbps full-duplex. The default option is auto-negotiate but I explicitly set it to 100mbp full-duplex. I’m behind a router. Interestingly, my internet connection starts giving problems: connection timeouts; page not loading; extreme ping times, etc etc etc Yet another system’s Internet connection Read More
What’s The Difference – VPN IPSEC Tunnel Mode and Transport Mode
IPSec’s protocol objective is to provide security services for IP packets such as encrypting sensitive data, authentication, protection against replay and data confidentiality. As outlined in our IPSec protocol article, Encapsulating Security Payload (ESP) and Authentication Header (AH) is the two IPSec security protocols used to provide these security services. Analyzing the ESP and AH protocols Read More