Interesting links (2011-12-31)

Last batch of interesting links collected in 2011 ... starting with Pricing and Trading Networks: Down is Up, Left is Right: A fantastic post from Chris Marget explaining the behavior of trading floor networks. For me, it was an amazing view into a parallel universe with a completely different set of physical laws.

And here are the other articles I found interesting in semi-random order:

Cloud

Guaranteed Availability Requires Reserving Instances in Specific Zones: Even Amazon is occasionally running out of resources.

Amazon Web Services Blog: New - Elastic Network Interfaces in the Virtual Private Cloud: Awesome idea: decouple interfaces (including MAC and IP address) from the servers.

Layer 0 networking

I Have The Power! – Common Electrical Connectors: Nice introduction to various electrical connectors

Powering Network Gear | NetworkingNerd Follow-Up: Even more power plug/cord information.

Physical Network Layout for the Reluctant: Cabling and wiring in your data center - an excellent introductory article by Matt Simmons.

Data Center

Tuning Hadoop and Hadoop driven applications: Hadoop 101 - from basics to tuning. Highly recommended.

OTV and VXLAN Layer 3 Connectivity Compared: A great comparison of OTV and VXLAN as inter-DC connectivity mechanisms. Scott seems to be moving from storage into networking ;)

Cisco Nexus 2000: A Love/Hate Relationship: A nice overview of pros and cons of Nexus 2000 fabric extenders by Tony Mattke.

Jumbo Frames, Support, LACP and Performance : Picking Nits: Another chapter in the never-ending to-LACP or not-to-LACP saga: do we increase server load (or kill TCP offload) by using LACP on the server?

OpenFlow

NOX | An OpenFlow Controller: If you're trying to get some hands-on OpenFlow exposure, this might be a good place to start.

Other topics

World in 2000 as Predicted in 1910: Instead of yearly predictions, how about looking a century ahead? This guy was doing pretty well, he got a lot of things almost right (well, you have to be a bit creative here and there).

On Originality: More Art Than Science: Another must-read article from Ethan Banks.

Why I Don’t Love Your Company Or Your Products.: Matthew Norwood has figured out why we love Disney but not IT companies.

Five Things You Should Stop Doing in 2012: Excellent recommendations for increased productivity. Start with "Ill check my e-mail every 90 minutes."

IPv6

RFC 6434 - IPv6 Node Requirements: Major change: IPsec is no longer mandatory. Other changes: DNS address configuration via RA messages is now recommended, proper handling of overlapping fragments is mandatory.

And don't forget: interesting links are now available as a shared Evernote notebook. Enjoy!

Add comment
Sidebar