T
he networking arena is one of the fastest
evolving spaces in the IT industry. From format
wars and company rivalries, to mobility and the
Internet of Things / Everything (IoT/E), we run
our eye over some of the tech trends which
you’ll be hearing a fair deal about this year.
Layer-1 Switching
Layer-1 switching is roughly analogous to the old circuit-switched phone networks, where operators would
manually patch calls end-to-end. An electrical signal comes
in one side of a crossbar switch (the patch panel) and is
electrically connected (patched) to another side of the
switch.
The benefit to a Layer-1 switch is that it can operate
programmatically. Users can cable their datacentre one
time, end-to-end, and then use something like OpenFlow to
programmatically change what is cabled to what, effectively
changing the electrical systems path inside the switch in
response to software instruction. What this means is that
certain manipulators like OpenFlow and Python can ‘move’
those physical connections logically to allow for a re-cabling
of the network without actually having to re-cable anything.
Needless to say, a lot of enterprises have started to take
note of the myriad possibilities made real by the flexibility of
cabling datacenters using Layer-1 switching, and it’s a trend
which can only continue to strengthen into the future.
Cisco ACI vs VMware NSX
Software defined networking (SDN) has attained near-ubiquity within the networking world over the last few years and
the two biggest industry players in this space will continue
to face-off over their respective technologies in this department.
VMware descibes NSX™ is the network virtualisation platform for the Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC), letting
users treat their physical networks as pools of transport
capacity, with network and security services attached to
VMs with a policy-driven approach.
Meanwhile, Cisco’s Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI)
in the data center is a holistic architecture with centralised
automation and policy-driven application profiles, claiming
to deliver software flexibility with the scalability of hardware
performance.
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