Results tagged "TRILL"
Total Search Results : 12
Will SDN Kill TRILL?
February 26, 2013 10:53 AM
Layer 2 multipathing standards such as TRILL and SPB may seem redundant in an SDN world. But these standards still have a role to play while we wait to see how the SDN market matures.Force 10 Lays Out Standards-Based Next Generation Networking Vision
April 27, 2011 08:00 AM
Force 10 is the latest networking vendor to announce a comprehensive vision for data center networking. Dubbed Open Cloud Networking, the idea is to use standard protocols to interconnect networking gear paired with their Open Automation capabilities, and offer integration and interoperation with network management and systems orchestration management servers. The company's announcement includes additional automation features and new hardware to support the vision. Force 10 is not the first to the table, nor is its vision as grand as Cisco's or Juniper's, but the focus on standards support should resonate with companies that rely on multiple vendors.When MLAG Is Good Enough
March 07, 2011 07:00 AM
Do you need multi-path Ethernet in the data center using TRILL, Shortest Path Bridging (SPB), Cisco's FabricPath or Brocade's VCS in order to maximize network efficiency and reduce congestion? Probably not, unless you manage a very big data center with servers and access ports running into the tens of thousands. If you have less than 5,000 access ports in your data center, you can probably avoid routing Ethernet frames and use your vendor's multi-chassis link aggregation (MLAG) product-set to interconnect the access in an active/active design. MLAG worksCisco's FabricPath and IETF TRILL: Cisco Can't Have Standards Both Ways
December 17, 2010 10:05 AM
Standards are standards for a reason. Standards allow customers to interconnect products with a hope that they will all work together easily and simply. It's how the Internet was built, though not without some problems, and how all the networking vendors built their businesses. No vendor, not even Cisco or Hewlett-Packard, can go it alone in enterprise networking. Even the whisper that a vendor is not standards-compliant can ruffle feathers and get danders up, so vendors come up with ways to give lip service to standards compliance when they really want to push their proprietary protocols. Vendors should innovate and address customer needs, but they should do so in a way that doesn't force customers into choosing either proprietary methods or standard protocols, something that Cisco seems to be doing with FabricPath and Transparent Connection of Lots of Links (TRILL).Brocade And Cisco Maintain SAN Lock-In Status Quo With FCoE
November 18, 2010 09:00 AM
If you are a storage administrator, you are used to vendor lock-in driven by your storage vendor and you choose SAN equipment based on a qualified equipment list. You might even defend the lock-in as being preferable. If you are a network administrator looking at FCoE, you are going to chafe under these restrictions because you'll find your product choices restricted to whatever products the SAN vendor, Brocade or Cisco, has qualified with. If you go off the qualified equipment list, you won't get support, and you will continue to pay comparatively high prices for what should be commodity equipment and features. Both Brocade and Cisco are trying to maintain the status quo in storage by standards and non-standards based protocols for the same functions forcing you into making a difficult choice and potentially locking out competitors.Brocade First To Market With Native End-to-End FCoE
November 15, 2010 12:05 PM
In the quest for one-ups-manship in product advances, Brocade announced it is the first vendor to bring end-to-end multi-hop Fiber Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) to the market. Brocade's VDX 6720 (the first in a planned family of products) is a top-of-rack (ToR) switch that support multi-path Ethernet, pay-as-you-grow Ethernet ports, and a new Brocade Network Operating System that unifies and simplifies switch management. The VDX is Brocade's first product to bring together the company's SAN and data networking expertise.Are The Networking Leaders Ready For A Shakeup?
September 10, 2010 09:07 AM
Being the market leader has its advantages. You set the agenda, for instance, but every so often the agenda is driven by outside forces. In technology, this happens when a new standard is going to become widely adopted, and at that point there is a chance for one of the third or forth-place companies to become the new leader. We saw this when storage area networking came to prominence, and we may be seeing it again as we potentially reach the end of spanning tree protocol (STP).Cisco FabricPath: Enhancing TRILL: Standards Compatible
July 15, 2010 09:30 AM
Cisco's announcement about FabricPath at CiscoLive cleared up the confusion about what FabricPath actually is. Cisco indicated that Nexus customers would have to choose between Cisco's own layer 2 multi-path protocol or TRILL, the other multi-path bridging standard that Cisco is supporting. A choice like that could cause lock-in to Cisco's proprietary protocol and product line. Cisco was also light on details about how FabricPath ehnahces TRILL. We asked Cisco for clarification on these points.Cisco's FabricPath: Multi-Path For Those Who Can't Wait For Standards
July 01, 2010 09:00 AM
Cisco made a few announcements at CiscoLive that extends thier footprint in the data center and offers Cisco customers migration paths to 10Gb Ethernet. The biggest announcement is Cisco's pre-standard multi-path Ethernet protocol called FabricPath that makes better use of switched infrastructure. Cisco is pretty far ahead of other networking vendors and most data centers with FabricPath, but for early adopters, Cisco and their customers will get some first hand experience with multi-path Ethernet. FabricPath is another step along Cisco path to virtualzing the data center network.Ethernet Keeps Winning
May 05, 2010 08:00 AM
In my early days in this industry, there was a topology battle between Ethernet and Token Ring. Token Ring was just about to release an amazingly fast 16MB/s version. It was interesting to watch IBM representatives, still in suits and ties then, draw a circle on the board and make analogies to Token Ring and the railroad. They were making the case that Token Ring was going be the infrastructure of choice and that Ethernet's time had come.1 | 2 | Next Page »
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