Planet Vyatta

Vblogatta: Startup of the Week

Allan Leinwand (noreply@blogger.com) — 2008-05-10T14:14:47+00:00

Very cool - Vyatta is named Startup of the Week by Information Week!

Vblogatta: Cross-post: GigaOm - Web2.0, Please Meet Your Host, the Internet

Allan Leinwand (noreply@blogger.com) — 2008-05-07T07:33:13+00:00

Router-huggers unite, here's a post for you.... :)

Vblogatta: Cross-post: GigaOm - Inexpensive, Powerful and Blindingly Fast

Allan Leinwand (noreply@blogger.com) — 2008-05-01T10:21:52+00:00

Intel enters the 10GigE adapter market in an aggressive way. Look out below - 10 Gig Ethernet is now a commodity. You can read my post on this here.

Vblogatta: Cross-post: GigaOm - Interop Vegas, Land of the Inexpensive and Powerful

Allan Leinwand (noreply@blogger.com) — 2008-04-30T14:33:07+00:00

A pervasive theme at Interop this year is using inexpensive and powerful hardware for networking. Hard for me to argue there! You can read the post over at GigaOm here.

Open Source Juicer: News Flash: Your Vyatta system just got cheaper

Dave Roberts — 2008-04-22T10:17:45+00:00

Here's a great example of the power of Ecosystem Economics™.

Cnet News.com is reporting that Intel just cut the prices of some of its quad-core CPUs by 50%. Obviously, this doesn't translate into a 50% cut in system prices, but isn't it nice to know that you'll be getting more power tomorrow for a lower price?

Obviously, your Cisco system probably won't get any cheaper tomorrow, barring a random pricing action from Cisco. Bummer.

This posting isn't the follow-up article I promised you the other day when we were talking about the Grid of Openness™;, but it was a timely highlight of an underlying point: open source + open hardware = Ecosystem Economics™. Ecosystem Economics™ immediately incorporates any pricing action into the whole market and everybody benefits.

Unless your networking vendor is sitting in the upper-right box in the Grid of Openness™, you'll never see benefits from things like this latest move from Intel. I'll try to expand on this point a bit more this week and we'll call it the follow up post I promised last time.

Open Source Juicer: "Open" 'Cause We Say So

Dave Roberts — 2008-04-18T14:44:23+00:00

So the recent feeding frenzy related to "open" networking devices started me thinking. What, exactly, do we mean by open?

This is one of those times in the market where a bandwagon starts to develop and everybody is hopping on board. Marketers around the networking industry are suddenly rushing around with yellow PostIt™ notes to stick the word "open" onto anything and everything. You half expect commercials such as, "The Global Networking Conglomerate 3000, now with improved 'openness.'" All this labeling of everything open really begs the question of what we mean by openness. And more to the point, what do consumers want "open" to mean? The answer from most of the vendors making announcements lately seems to be, "It's 'open' because we say so."

Over the next few paragraphs, let's examine what "open" could possibly mean, and then we'll try to triangulate the positions of the various companies that have announced "open" products.

It seems to me that there are at least two dimensions for openness: hardware and software. There may be more, but those are certainly the most obvious and having two dimensions makes for a good graph. Along each dimension, there are (at least) four degrees of openness.

For instance, along the hardware dimension a company could have:

Proprietary hardware -- This represents the most-closed hardware. Developing for this sort of platform requires an embedded development kit because the architecture is non-standard. Note that proprietary hardware may use standard components, such as x86 CPUs, but because of the way the hardware is designed, it's still an embedded system, not standard.
x86 blade -- When proprietary companies want to "open up" the hardware, they often do so by adding an x86 blade to the system. While the "host" hardware system is still very proprietary, the blade uses a more standard PC architecture and may use more standard development tools.
x86-based -- In this model, the hardware is completely standard, but is sold as a proprietary system. Many security and traffic management appliances use this model. The vendor buys a white-box PC, adds a branded label to it, and then loads their own software onto the system. While the hardware is completely standard under the hood, there is no suggestion from the vendor that the user is able to swap components or perform system upgrades using standard components.
Commodity hardware -- This is the final model. The system uses completely open hardware and the supplier and customer both expect that users will be able to perform system upgrades with components from different vendors. The current x86 server market delivers this kind of hardware today.

Similarly, along the software dimension, the following four models can be seen:

Proprietary software -- In this model, the software is completely closed. It's sold only in binary form. Users use the software and there is no ability to develop extensions without acquiring a proprietary license.
Country-club API -- In this model, the company opens some APIs that allow external developers to interact with its otherwise-proprietary system in a programmatic way, but the API or SDK must be licensed from the company. Typically, the company tightly controls who is allowed to participate in the program and may charge a multi-thousand-dollar "program fee" to participate. This makes the program as exclusive as a country-club.
Open API -- In this model, the API is completely open, with no strings attached in order to get it an use it. A public SDK, posted for free download from a web site would qualify here. The code you're interfacing with would still be closed-source, but at least you could get ahold of the SDK without paying any fees or being "approved." Note that you may still have to buy oodles of proprietary hardware in order to do any development, but at least the SDK is freely available.
Open source -- This is obviously the most open. The source code is readily available and there are no fees to develop with the system.

Now, given all these definitions, we can make a chart that describes the landscape graphically:

I've also plotted some of the recent announcements according to how I think they stack up.

Vyatta -- Vyatta first launched its product in July 2006. Vyatta has been open source and running on open, commodity hardware since the get-go. Want to download our software? You can do it from the web site. Want to download the source code? We have instructions in plain view. Want to run your Vyatta system on whatever hardware you want? That's fine by us, and we have even published a hardware compatibility list to help you choose something known to work well, but you're free to go off-menu as well.
3Com -- 3Com was early out of the gate, over a year ago (1Q07). 3Com announced an x86 blade for its routers and a country-club API software program, called OSN. OSN has a couple membership different levels, with the lowest level free to join, so it may be that OSN is walking the line between a country-club API and an open API.
Juniper -- Next up was Juniper in December 2007 with the PSDP program. The PSDP was a country-club API program delivered on the same proprietary hardware they had shipped previously (no blades required). There are a couple of positions for Juniper on the chart because they have different product lines with different implementation techniques and different capabilities. From what I have read, the PSDP only applies to the high-end service provider routers; the Juniper J-series routers are essentially PCs with a proprietary software load. Juniper does change the connectors and form-factor of the add-in cards so they look proprietary, but they're just standard PCI hardware under the hood. The processor is a stock Intel x86 CPU.
Riverbed -- In February 2008, Riverbed started making noise about opening up with its RiOS Services Platform (RSP). Riverbed is a good example of an appliance vendor using stock PC hardware with a proprietary software load. The RSP program puts Riverbed into the country-club API on x86-based hardware category on this chart.
Cisco -- Finally, in April 2008, Cisco announced its Application eXtension Platform (AXP) program. This is another good example of a country-club API paired with an x86-based blade to plug into proprietary hardware. Of course, the AXP is only available on the ISR series; the rest of Cisco's product line remains locked up tighter than Fort Knox and finds itself down in the Proprietary/Proprietary category.

This post is already getting pretty long, so I'll cut it off here. The major takeaway of all this is that there are different degrees of "open" that are running about the networking market these days. With everybody using the same word, and being intentionally vague (and sometimes misleading), it's easy to confuse one "open" for another. But they're not created equal. Don't be afraid to ask a vendor why they think they're being particularly open. If you don't like the vague, "'cause we say so" answer you're likely to get initially, don't be afraid to press ahead. At least at Vyatta, we have no trouble answering that question. The other guys...? Well, who knows.

In a follow-on post, we'll discuss the implications of being more open. Are there really differences between an x86-blade with a country-club API versus open source software running on commodity hardware? The short answer is you betcha! See you next time.

Vblogatta: Cross-post: GigaOm - Wanted: Virtualization Engineer, Referee Exp. Pref.

Allan Leinwand (noreply@blogger.com) — 2008-04-17T15:07:43+00:00

Is it time for a virtualization engineer? Here are my thoughts on this topic, posted over at GigaOm.

Vblogatta: Argentina goes Open!

Allan Leinwand (noreply@blogger.com) — 2008-04-17T15:03:47+00:00

Interesting news from Ostatic that Argentina may be the first country to regulate that all government offices use open source. For those that know me well, you know that my godson is from Buenos Aires and that I've spent my fair share of time crossing 9 de Julio. I have lots of good memories of BA and this news just reaffirms my desire to spend more time in this great country eating milanesas and alfajores de Havanna.

Open Source Juicer: Dumb and Dumber

Dave Roberts — 2008-04-14T11:13:03+00:00

When you're a big networking company and all your competitors are talking about open networking platforms, you have to do something... fast. Unfortunately, charging oodles of money for a low-performance x86 blade that you can stuff into your router seems to be the typical response. Hang with me for a moment and I'll explain.

Our story starts way back in January 2007 when 3Com announced its Open Services Networking initiative. At the time, 3Com said that it was "opening up" its routers by allowing you to run Linux on an x86-based blade that plugged into its systems. Since that time, 3Com has announced a few partners and applications that have been developed. Back in early 2007, most people yawned. Frankly, this was a pretty obvious innovation in the industry and hey, it was from 3Com, so who cares?

Next, Juniper got into the act when it announced the piss-dip (PSDP) on the first day of Cisco's yearly analyst conference in December 2007? The piss-dip, as you'll recall, is a program to allow a group of country-club ISVs to implement interesting functionality on top of Juniper's products using some nifty APIs. In return for a development fee and some legal paperwork, Juniper sends you a software development kit (SDK) and you're good to go. Notably, Juniper did not announced an overpriced x86-blade for its routers as part of the program. That may be because Juniper already sells overpriced x86-blades (they're called "Routing Engines" to make you feel more comfortable paying that much).

Now, Cisco couldn't take all that laying down. They had to respond. And fast. When asked at the analyst conference, they waved their hands and said, "...someday..." But this was embarrassing. Here we have nearly-dead 3Com and now arch-rival Juniper going where Cisco has never gone, and flaunting it in front of Cisco's not-nearly-skeptical-enough analyst corps. That's not good.

So, enter the Application eXtension Platform (AXP). Basically, Cisco aped 3Com's approach: with the AXP, you can pay wads of money for a low-performance x86-blade that plugs into your Integrated Services Router (ISR).

Let's look at the numbers. 3Com was trying to sell us a 1.4 GHz Pentium M, 1 GB RAM, 80 GB HDD system for over $3000 street price. Now we have Cisco trying to sell us a 1.4 GHz Pentium, 2 GB RAM, 160 GB HDD for over $6000 street (NME-522). Okay, so they did double the RAM and hard disk size. But in today's world, that's worth a grand total of about $79 (per CDW.com, 80 GB ($50) vs. 160 GB ($62) Seagate Barracuda SATA HDD, 1 GB ($77) vs. 2 GB ($144) Crucial PC3200 DRAM). Even at the low end of the three modules that Cisco announced, they're trying to charge $1700 for a 300 MHz Celeron (AIM-102)! Yup, you read that right, MHz, not GHz. Frankly, I didn't realize that you could still buy something that slow from Intel. I think that processor was completely obsolete nearly 10 years ago.

Now, realize that neither of these x86 blades is expandable in any way. If you don't like the performance or RAM or HDD size, you have no options. You can't upgrade them, short of buying a whole new module in Cisco's case. If you already bought the fastest one (NME-522), you're screwed. No expansion slots. No multi-core. No options. Bluntly, you're trapped in Cisco World™ and 3Com World™.

Does anybody else feel like we're watching the movie Dumb and Dumber here?

Of course, for both 3Com and Cisco, you also have to buy the router to plug these underpowered, overpriced x86 blades into. Presumably, you have already made that decision, so the $4000 to $15,000 of sunk cost shouldn't bother you.

At this point, I have to hand it to Juniper: the piss-dip looks pretty good when compared to these options. Juniper at least lets you run piss-dip applications on the Routing Engine you already paid for instead of charging you oodles more for another blade.

The point of this rant is simply that this is what you get from proprietary networking companies. Even when they serve up completely open technologies like Linux running on x86, it's going to be terribly expensive with lock in not far behind.

In contrast, Vyatta runs on standard x86 systems. You can buy those systems with Vyatta software preloaded, directly from Vyatta, or you can buy the hardware from your favorite hardware vendor and your software subscription from us. If you want a hybrid of the two approaches, that's fine with us, too. While Vyatta does mark up the hardware we sell, we try to keep that markup small and appropriate.

Importantly, with Vyatta, you aren't stuck with no options if you want to make a change to the system. Need to run faster? There are oodles of vendors with blazing multi-core systems available today. Want more memory? Fine, you can purchase it from just about anybody. Need a bigger hard drive? No problem. Want to add different applications to your system? It's pretty easy since Vyatta is Debian-compatible. Want to extend or hack the system? The source code is on the Internet and you can download it for free, without any legal paperwork.

The other guys will go on and on about their proprietary hardware. "You just can't do networking on standard x86 systems," they'll say. "You need our sooper-dooper ASICs to run fast, and well, you know how much those cost..."

But the fact is, it simply isn't true. With Vyatta and an IBM x3550 quad-core server, available for about $4000 or so, you can whip a $35,000 Cisco 7204/G2. With Vyatta and a $1000 Dell PowerEdge 860, you can demolish a Cisco 2821 ISR. Check out Vyatta's 3rd party testing if you don't believe me.

Once you're done doing that, you can use all those MIPS to run whatever applications you want, including many of the sorts of things that Cisco and 3Com would charge you for (remember that the x86 blades are just the hardware--you still have to buy applications from other vendors).

At the end of the day, the key point here is that the other guys charge you a lot of money to open up a closed system. And when you pay that money, you still find yourself stuck in an alternative reality called Cisco World™, Juniper World™ or 3Com World™.

Is that "open?" Not in the Real World™

Update: Okay, a commenter pointed out that I pulled the wrong prices for the Cisco AXP modules. I had incorrectly used the WAAS version of the NME-522. Apologies for that. It's the same hardware, but a different software load, and therefore a different price. Looks like list on the AXP version of the NME-522 is about $3500. More than 3Com, but reasonable given the doubling of memory and disk capacity. That said, I still stick with my main point that this is an expensive, underpowered PC with no flexibility, and that's after you purchase the router to plug it into. Rather than titling this post "Dumb and Dumber," maybe I'll have to change it to "Dumb and Dumb."

Vblogatta: Cross-post: GigaOm on The Music Industry

Allan Leinwand (noreply@blogger.com) — 2008-04-02T07:00:50+00:00

Nothing gets me revved up faster than a double shot of espresso than more the stupidity of the music business. You can read my latest rant on this topic over at GigaOm. You really don't want to see me after the espresso :)

Open Source Juicer: Kernel.org to be upgraded to FreeBSD 7.0

Dave Roberts — 2008-04-01T10:15:38+00:00

Such is the word...

Wow, whoda thunk it?

Some of the comments back pointed out other documents worth reading today, just for historical perspective. Some of my favorite RFCs include:

I particularly like the last two as related to Vyatta's firewall implementation. We have had numerous requests for RFC 3514 support and are slotting it into a future release.

You can find a more complete list of interesting RFCs on Wikipedia.

Gotcha...

Vblogatta: Cross-post on ostatic with quote from Kelly Herrell

Allan Leinwand (noreply@blogger.com) — 2008-03-25T15:02:02+00:00

Kelly Herrell is famous for some great quotes around the workplace. I took one of these and turned it into a blog post on ostatic that you can read here.

Vblogatta: Cross-post - GigaOm: Coming Soon - the Cisco Blade Server?

Allan Leinwand (noreply@blogger.com) — 2008-03-21T17:02:48+00:00

I wrote a blog post this week on the possibility of Cisco moving into the enterprise data center by offering blade servers for their new Nexus 7000 switch. I think this move is inevitable given that Cisco, IBM, HP, Microsoft, VMware and others are fighting for account control in the enterprise data center. You can read my post here.

Vblogatta: Cross-post: GigaOm: Save Music - Disconnect the Internet!

Allan Leinwand (noreply@blogger.com) — 2008-03-20T11:26:39+00:00

This topic has never failed to raise my blood pressure and get me worked up.... Why again should ISPs be responsible for people breaking the law using their infrastructure? Read my latest post on this topic here and get ready for some dripping sarcasm.

Vblogatta: NASA and open source

Allan Leinwand (noreply@blogger.com) — 2008-03-11T08:18:53+00:00

It looks like open source is going where few people have gone before - to space, the final frontier. Coverage of NASA's use of Fedora and RHEL starts here on the ostatic blog. I can already picture the Vyatta system routing packets between planets, something that has been on the minds of networking geeks for over 8 years.

Open Source Juicer: "The Patent Reform Act will harm the U.S. technology industry"

Dave Roberts — 2008-03-10T14:49:29+00:00

Steve Tobak posted an article about the upcoming Patent Reform Act over at C|Net. I had just mentioned intellectual property reform a couple of days ago in this previous blog entry.

Interestingly, I disagree with Steve's analysis. Steve says:

Let's instead just cut to the chase. In lay terms, the bill makes it easier to challenge issued patents and harder for patent holders to obtain compensation through the U.S. legal system.

Steve argues that because the US is shifting away from a production economy to an intellectual property and licensing economy, these "reforms" are bad for US business. Steve says:

In one corner are big technology companies such as Apple, Cisco, Dell, Google, HP, Intel, Microsoft, Oracle and SAP. These folks make a living selling products and services. They say that patent abuses in the current system are stifling innovation.

In the other corner are technology licensing companies such as 3M, Qualcomm, Rambus, Tessera, and biotech and pharmaceutical companies. They say the act will limit patent holder's rights and stifle innovation.

While each side claims the other limits innovation, the truth is that neither side cares about innovation; they are only concerned with their business model. That's not necessarily a bad thing, since a company's duty is primarily to its shareholders, but it does bear mentioning here.

Now, I have lived in the technology industry for quite some time. I have never worked at a large technology licensing company such as 3M, Qualcomm, Rambus, or in biomed or pharma. That probably biases my thinking.

On the other hand, I have about 10 patents, assigned to various companies I have worked for over the years. I have spent a reasonable amount of time dealing with the patent system.

The fact is, many patents are bogus (think Amazon's 1-Click patent). There, I said it. Many should not have been issued, either because they are so obvious to those knowledgeable in the art or because there was existing prior art. These bogus patents are a noose around the neck of the technology industry. They clog up the system and make it impossible to create almost anything without treading on somebody's patent without even knowing about it. With a patent term of 17 to 20 years, these bogus patents are in force for multiple product lifetimes. For perspective, 20 years is 10 to 13 turns of of the Moore's Law crank. Patents expiring now would have been issued back in 1990, before the explosive rise of the Internet (though the Internet was actually being used at that point, nobody outside of academic and tech circles had heard of it). If you don't think that stifles product innovation, you have never tried to innovate. I have lived with this environment all of my career. I have made decisions in the past to navigate around bogus patents, simply because the lawyers told me it was a lost cause to try to challenge them.

What's all the more infuriating about the current patent situation is that many of today's patents go against the original social contract surrounding patents. The original goal of the patent system was to get inventors to share their innovations for the common good. In return for a limited monopoly, you, Mr. Inventor, share your invention so that We, the public, can understand how you did it and can then innovate on top of it. Rather than stifling innovation, patents were supposed to drive it forward.

Unfortunately, many patents, even the ones that are legit, would have been created independently anyway. It's obviously a balance, but at least in the world I live in, I see patents getting in the way rather than helping me. I have never gone and looked at old patents to get new ideas for products. The only time an independent patent, one that I'm not working on filing myself, comes to my attention, it's because somebody is getting sued for infringing it. This tells me that we have lost the original goal that patents were supposed to foster.

Now, it's important to realize what the patent reform act doesn't do. It doesn't mean that patents are extinct. It also doesn't mean that bogus patents go away with a snap of the fingers. What it does do is allow for easier challenging of what appears to be a bogus patent. This may increase the cost of patent filings since more people could challenge the patent and you'd have to respond to it. Personally, I think this works. The costs should be weighted toward the party that has the most to gain from the granting of the patent. The downstream costs of litigating bogus patents (think not just lawyers but injunctions and product disruptions) are far higher than the cost of allowing patents to be challenged with greater frequency.

In short, I think the Patent Reform Act, while in no ways perfect (doesn't go far enough, IMO), is at least a step in the right direction. Admittedly, I don't work for a large intellectual property company or a biotech/pharma company. Perhaps I'd feel differently in that case, but from where I sit, if we really want to spur innovation, we should really overhaul the system even further than the Patent Reform Act.

Vblogatta: US recession would help open source

Allan Leinwand (noreply@blogger.com) — 2008-03-07T15:49:05+00:00

According to Sun, FOSS will be helped by the US recession. I guess there is always a silver lining! Read about the good part of the US recession here.

Vblogatta: No wonder I like Europe so much....

Allan Leinwand (noreply@blogger.com) — 2008-03-07T06:23:36+00:00

The EU has announced that it will consider buying more open-source software. While this is clearly another gnarl at Microsoft, it also bodes well for EU business practices and economics. You can read some thoughts on this announcements over at Ostatic as well. Ah, how I look forward to Paris in the spring time - browsing the web with Firefox running on Fedora and connected to the Internet with Vyatta routers.

Open Source Juicer: Copyright law is broken

Dave Roberts — 2008-03-05T18:16:46+00:00

Timothy B. Lee has a great article on Ars Technica about the struggle to apply copyright law in modern times. Frankly, intellectual property law is not scaling well with today's technology. The US Congress is presently in the middle of a major patent reform project which I daresay will not deliver from the moment it's put in effect. Copyright rules have been moving around constantly, with the MPAA and RIAA doing all they can to go after "illegal" file sharing.

If you're interested in the subject of copyright, and you should be if you're interested in open source, I highly recommend Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig. This book opened my eyes to the problems facing all sorts of industries because of various unintended consequences of the current copyright laws. One of the key points in the book is that because today's current copyright law recognizes that all creative works automatically receive copyright protection for the life of the author plus a large amount of time afterward, virtually everything in modern life is copyrighted and therefore is subject to a grant of permission before it can somehow be recycled into another work.

This idea that culture builds on the culture of a few years ago, recycling it and re-synthesizing it into something new and modern is important. An obvious example is a redramatization of an old story plot into a new movie or book (reusing plots from Greek tragedy, for instance). In music, it's about resampling and remixing to create something new (Vanilla Ice swiping the Queen "Under Pressure" baseline for "Ice, Ice, Baby"). Think about movie and television shows that must "clear" copyright on just about every image or sound that is shown. This world is only getting more complex by the day, and it's hampering the world around us, often for no good reason because most people don't care about the copyrights they are granted automatically by the law. Sometimes it's impossible to find out exactly who owns a given copyright and so it's impossible to reuse that material legally.

Free Culture does a great job describing some of the problems and suggesting reform that would at least mitigate some of the problems.

Now, what does this have to do with open source? Well, all open source licenses (the GNU Public License, BSD license, Mozilla Public license, etc.) basically rely on copyright law for their enforcement. The primary difference between the GPL and code that is in the public domain (uncopyrighted), for instance, is that the GPL can grant a set of rights, subject to a set of proscribed responsibilities, to a distributor of a product that uses the code. Public domain code can be used for any purpose whatsoever and effectively nullifies the GPL's "viral" nature that forces you to release your code. You can combine public domain code with your proprietary code and it effectively becomes proprietary.

Now, in a world without copyright, you could use anybody else's code for any purpose and you would not have to release your own source. But once your own source got out, you could not stop people redistributing it or using it for any purpose.

It's an interesting thought experiment to think about what would happen if all intellectual property law was simply abolished. No more copyright. No more patents. No more trademarks. I'm not sure I'm ready to go to that extreme, but it's very clear that even laws that "worked" in the 1970s are no longer able to deal with the environment of 2008. But changing these laws will create tectonic shifts of power and money and so the wheels of progress move slowly.

Buy yourself a copy of Free Culture and expand your mind.

Open Source Juicer: You spend 5 years and $250M and that's all you came up with?

Dave Roberts — 2008-03-04T16:07:16+00:00

Well, Cisco finally introduced the ASR 1000 family of routers this morning. It was, well, underwhelming. After a secretive ad campaign that featured the Easter Bunny, a bird man, a transvestite cupid, and a unicorn lady, I was geared up for something exciting. Instead, I got the ASR.

So far, most of my info has come from Network World, Light Reading, and Cisco's press release and data sheets. Here's how I see things:

First, I would not hang it out there as a badge of honor that you spent $250M and 5 years on this thing. If you're a Cisco stockholder, you should be screaming bloody murder. I talked to an analyst today who pointed out how many start ups you could have funded with that cash and how much technology you would have gotten back in return. Cisco should be hanging its head in shame.
It's positioned to replace the 7200, sort of. They'll still sell you the 7200 if you want, so it isn't technically obsolete... yet. Or you can pay something like 30 percent more for the ASR. Your choice. Light Reading says:
"It doesn't have the performance of the 7600 at the higher end, and it doesn't have the price point of the 7200 at the lower end," Shetty admits. Moreover, he notes the ASR isn't a carrier Ethernet platform like the 7600.
They spent 5 years and $250M but could only come up with a 10 Gbps router?
The routing table size is only 1 M IPv4 routes and 250k IPv6 routes. So that means that it's less scalable than the 7200 and if the world converts to IPv6 tomorrow it's obsolete immediately because the current Internet routing table is ~250,000 routes already. Fire the guy who did that math.
The ASR runs a new version of IOS, called IOS-XE. IOS seems to be breeding faster than tribbles on the USS Enterprise, in spite of Cisco's claims that they would actually reduce the number of IOS versions out there. Notably, IOS-XE is not derived from IOS-XR, in spite of the similar name. Rumor has it that it's the 7200 IOS running as a daemon on Linux. Network World notes the Linux connection and Light Reading says:
Cisco did need to do something new to let the ASR run two copies of its operating system, something Shetty says hasn't been done before in boxes this small.
In fact, it has been done in boxes this small for quite a while (ahem, Vyatta), years in fact. In fact, Vyatta uses true virtualization, rather than just running an old operating system in a single process.
I just about sprayed coffee out my nose this morning when I was reading the Cisco press release:
The Cisco ASR 1000 Series also enables service providers and enterprises to reduce their carbon footprint. By surpassing the capabilities possible in multi-device, multi-vendor solutions, the Cisco ASR 1000 Series dramatically decreases both the architectural complexity of deployment for service providers and enterprises but also their carbon footprints as well. Analysis conducted by Synergy Research found that, when compared to competitive offerings, each implementation of the Cisco ASR 1000 Series can result in carbon footprints savings up to 3754 gallons of gasoline or 17 tons of coal annually.
Gak! Are we really at the point of computing carbon offsets for networking equipment? Are price-per-port or maximum-performance now passé competitive metrics? Coming to an Interop panel near you: "Well, how many cars did your router take off the road??" Or maybe in a future datasheet: "The ASR 1000 has a performance to carbon ratio of 38949 Gbps per coal ton." Sigh...

And here I thought networking was starting to get boring. Between the chicken-man and carbon offsets, I spent the morning laughing...

Vblogatta: Cross-post on Ostatic

Allan Leinwand (noreply@blogger.com) — 2008-03-04T14:48:33+00:00

Om asked me to help christen his latest addition to the GigaOm network, the Ostatic blog with a post on open source telecom. That seemed right up my alley.... You can read my post here. In case you are wondering - I know I was - Ostatic is destined to be slang for "ecstatic with open source." That works for me!

Open Source Juicer: Open, Open, Open

Dave Roberts — 2008-03-03T17:45:11+00:00

It's the word of the day: OPEN. Last week, people started talking about Riverbed opening up its WAN optimization appliances to other 3rd party applications. Does anybody notice a trend? First, it was 3Com. Then Juniper and Cisco. And now Riverbed. Seems like a trend to me. Fortunately, Vyatta has that "open" thing covered.

Vblogatta: GigaOm: ISPs or Bobbies?

Allan Leinwand (noreply@blogger.com) — 2008-02-12T12:36:14+00:00

Insanity around policing the Internet continues. The UK is considering legislation that will force ISPs to disconnect users if they are suspected of downloading pirated music or video. I thought theft was handled by police? Read my post on this topic here.

Vblogatta: A decade of open source

Allan Leinwand (noreply@blogger.com) — 2008-02-08T10:59:14+00:00

Here's a great post by Bruce Perens about the first decade of open source. As entrenched open source is throughout IT infrastructure, it's easy to forget this movement is only ten years old.

Vblogatta: Cross-post: GigaOm on Insecure Borders

Allan Leinwand (noreply@blogger.com) — 2008-02-07T16:12:38+00:00

I read an article today that really bothered me about the US government performing searches on digital media when entering the country. I wrote a short blog about this for Om that you can read here. I guess when you bring a Vyatta system into the US you may have to boot it up and execute a "show config" command?!?

Vblogatta: GigaOm: The IPv6 Revolution is Nigh

Allan Leinwand (noreply@blogger.com) — 2008-02-05T16:23:03+00:00

Here's a post that I wrote on how we're getting closer and closer to IPv6 being deployed globally. Another chink in the chain fell into place this week with the root-level domain name servers returning IPv4 and IPv6 addresses instead of only IPv4 addresses. Read more of my post here.

Vblogatta: Open source up 26% in the enterprise

Allan Leinwand (noreply@blogger.com) — 2008-02-01T13:04:27+00:00

Open source in the enterprise is on the rise and up 26% - it's only a matter of time people, only a matter of time....

Vblogatta: Publicly Slamming U2

Allan Leinwand (noreply@blogger.com) — 2008-01-30T12:49:10+00:00

Here's a post I wrote for Om where I have publicly slammed my favorite rock band of all time (well, their manager). Bono please forgive me, but something had to be said on this issue.

Vblogatta: Open source spaceship

Allan Leinwand (noreply@blogger.com) — 2008-01-23T13:28:16+00:00

Virgin Galactic revealed plans for SpaceShipTwo with an open architecture today. From the press that I read, it looks like Virgin Galactic will be more of a user of open source than an open source company. Still, the words "open source" next to the word "spaceship" is pretty cool Yes, I think the open source model has evolved. If it is good enough for rocket science, it is surely good enough for data networks!

Open Source Juicer: "I'm not dead yet!"

Dave Roberts — 2008-01-22T17:36:01+00:00

Last month, we saw Juniper and Cisco battling to announce that they were going to open up their networking systems. In a desperate bid to remain relevant, 3Com just recently announced that they are shipping the first two major applications for their OSN routers, a 3Com-branded Asterisk-based PBX and a WAN optimization solution from Expand Networks. My hunch is that this was 3Com's equivalent of yelling, "I'm not dead yet!"

To give 3Com credit, it did (pre-)announce its OSN initiative in early 2007, far ahead of either Juniper or Cisco, but far behind Vyatta. Also to be fair, 3Com's OSN really isn't all that interesting. The OSN Flexible Interface Card (FIC) takes the tired route of simply attaching a PC to your router backplane and charging you lots of money for it. In the case of 3Com's OSN, the company wants more than $3000 for a 512 MB RAM, 80 GB HDD system. 3Com's datasheet doesn't tell you the processor speed or type, but rumors are that it's a low-speed Celeron processor. That's a lot to be charging for that.

By the way, that's all before you buy the chassis, any router modules, etc. To compare apples to apples, this would be like buying Vyatta, then buying another $3000 system on which to run these other applications. But yes, you do get the comfort of having it all wrapped in sheet metal and connected with a backplane.

Personally, I'd rather integrate at the software level, not the hardware level. With Vyatta, you can run any open source application on your system. At last count the Debian system had more than 10,000 different packages. Now, in truth, you might have no desire to run MySQL or Emacs on your router, but the fact is that you could do so. And things like Snort, Asterisk (pick your distribution, not just 3Com's), or SpamAssassin are interesting.

So, while OSN uses Linux, it really doesn't give you an open source solution. In most ways, it's the same closed-community country-club offered by Juniper's PSDP. Joining the program and getting the API still requires you to sign paperwork with 3Com.

When will the proprietary boys learn, you simply can't equal the innovation and creativity of a true open-source community. Rather than simply repeating the words "open source" at every opportunity, let's see the code! It is gratifying to see everybody repeating the Vyatta message, though. If you thought that open source networking wasn't going to amount to much, all these Juniper, Cisco, and now 3Com announcements ought to set you thinking. This is such a powerful concept that all the big boys are scared to be left out of the action.

Well, not only is Vyatta not dead yet, we haven't even begun to live. Watch out world, here we come!

Vblogatta: My year without the Broncos - the review

Allan Leinwand (noreply@blogger.com) — 2008-01-21T17:54:21+00:00

So, it is 2008 and the Denver Broncos finished last season in miserable form. I honestly don't know their final win-loss record off the top of my head and it's been decades since that was true in January. I did manage to hold true to my oath not to watch the Broncos in 2007 and I'm really not worse for the wear. 2007 was a good year but I suspect I'll ruin 2008 following my favorite team to another disappointing season. Baseball anyone? :)

Vblogatta: Cross-post: GigaOm on Collaboration Tools

Allan Leinwand (noreply@blogger.com) — 2008-01-21T17:49:21+00:00

Here's a post I did for Om on my current quest for new collaboration tools for our advisors at Panorama Capital. As always, please let me know your comments and suggestions.

Open Source Juicer: Bravo Linux Magazine

Dave Roberts — 2008-01-10T09:18:42+00:00

So this morning I came into work and was going through my email. I'm subscribed to the Linux Magazine newsletter, so every day or two I see which articles highlighted in the newsletter might interest me and I go through and read them. This morning, I clicked on a link in one of the newsletter emails and instead of an article got this instead:

I had to laugh out loud. That's so much better than a boring 404 error in the default font.

Bravo Linux Magazine! Thank you for having a sense of humor.

Vblogatta: Cross-post - GigaOm: How to Safeguard Your Privacy Online

Allan Leinwand (noreply@blogger.com) — 2007-12-27T07:51:50+00:00

I'm been fascinated by the constant drum of media around privacy issues on the Internet and how people are surprised when their privacy has been compromised. I absolutely believe that everything you send on-line is being tracked and monitored (and I'm not too paranoid :) and wrote about some things you can do to help you try to keep some of your privacy and leave less of a digital footprint for Om.

Vblogatta: Cross-post: GigaOm - In Search of the Über Set-top Box

Allan Leinwand (noreply@blogger.com) — 2007-12-19T11:49:59+00:00

I've been thinking a lot about video on the Internet these days given our recent investment in GridNetworks. That got me thinking about set-top boxes and I wrote this post for Om. Comments and suggestions always welcome!

Open Source Juicer: Parents are never "cool"

Dave Roberts — 2007-12-13T10:31:57+00:00

December is usually a very light month in the trade news world. Whoda thunk that this week Juniper and Cisco would announce major plans to "go open?"

Juniper started the love-fest with "openness" on Monday with the announcement of its Partner Solution Development Platform (PSDP). Essentially, if you're a big company, and Juniper decides that you're worthy, Juniper will give you the privilege of signing an NDA and paying it yearly fee in order to develop applications that will run on the control plane processor or line cards of its router.

Not wanting to seem like a shrew, Cisco today announced that it too will open up IOS, somehow, someday...

Now, first let's get around to separating the men from the boys. Juniper actually has a real program with a real name (with a real gobbledy-gook four-letter acronym, doncha know). Cisco basically just did an internal reorganization of itself and is handwaving at some future openness, trying to rain on Juniper's parade. The fact is, Cisco has nothing other than an intent to do something, someday.

Now that we have that out of the way, let's look at Juniper. Basically, Juniper's program is an invitation-only affair, like a snobby country-club that would never be so crass as to allow the riff-raff into the building. If you're interested in developing to Juniper's PSDP (aside: am I the only person who says "piss-dip" there?), you can apply, but Juniper has to feel that you're "worthy" enough to be accepted. Once they decide that you're good enough, you get the privilege of signing a bunch of legal paperwork and paying them a hefty fee. After all that, you can write programs in the JunOS-variant of FreeBSD and for their forwarding engine processors.

Sitting here at Vyatta, this all feels a lot like when your parents tried to be cool in high school by adopting the then-current teenage slang vocabulary in order to "get more connected with their kids." Now matter how hard they tried, they always looked foolish and it always ended badly. Simply adopting language doesn't make you cool. Teenagers know this instinctively; multi-billion dollar public companies seem to forget it.

So let me be the first to really question Juniper's program (I won't even consider Cisco's handwaving further). Juniper, I ask you, what really changed here? Juniper, are you saying that previously, if I was a large, multi-billion dollar company like PSDP-pioneer Avaya, and if I came to you and said I'd like to develop something that would run on JunOS, you wouldn't have considered it, and if accepted make me sign NDAs and pay you a lot of money for the privilege? I find that hard to believe. Okay, so maybe you got a bit more formal in the method that you use to process these requests and you gave it a four-letter acronym, but what's really different for users?

See, to really be cool, you have to adopt more than the terminology. If you really want to be open, then go all the way. Post your source code on the Internet like Vyatta has (on purpose this time). Let anybody download it at any time. Without signing an NDA. Without paying you a lot of money. Without even telling you they have done so. Let them release an extension or a hack and do so in a vertical niche market you haven't ever heard of. In short, really open it up to developers large and small and harness the innovation of the whole world, not just the limited imaginations of other multi-billion dollar corporations who are able to pay the annual dues to your country-club.

That would really be cool. Oh, but then you can't claim to be first, because that's already been done.

Open Source Juicer: Gartner's Vendor Influence Curve: The emperor finally has no clothes

Dave Roberts — 2007-12-12T15:33:32+00:00

Was just reading an older article in Network World by Jim Duffy: Beware the single vendor as trusted advisor: Gartner. Essentially, Gartner has come up with another tool called the "Vendor Influence Curve" which describes the relationship between a vendor and a customer. The curve basically shows a tradeoff between a vendor's understanding of an enterprise's requirements and the value to the enterprise.

Initially, in the first few stages, there is value to the enterprise in seeking out a vendor that understands the customer's business requirements. In that case, then vendor can help the enterprise make good decisions. At some point, the customer starts to cede decision making power over the vendor, however, and at that point the vendor starts to make decisions in the vendor's self interest. It's Gartner's claim that for many customers, Cisco is at point 4 or 5 on the graph and needs to be reigned in.

Now, obviously, Cisco being who they are, you pretty much have to at least get their opinion on things related to networks. What Gartner is suggesting, however, is that you also get a few more educated second and third opinions. If a single vendor has become your sole "go-to guy" for buying decisions, you're probably making bad strategic decisions for your business and you're probably paying WAAAAYYY too much.

I have to applaud Gartner here for finally saying that the emperor has no clothes, and for Network World for reporting it. The fact is, both of these organizations derive a lot of revenue from Cisco as their own customer (Gartner for analyst services, and Network World for advertising and various other conference sponsorships). Good job, folks, the emperor is, in fact, buck naked.

Vblogatta: Breaking out of the Cisco mold

Allan Leinwand — 2007-12-05T14:24:29+00:00

I came across a great article by Network World today on why it makes sense to break away from Cisco as your single networking vendor for your organization. To be fair, this article was a counterpoint to an argument on why having a single vendor and a single throat to choke is a good thing. The point of the article that I found very interesting was that while Cisco is a single company, their product line is complex and filled with many reliability impacting software features that most people never touch. This impacts MTTR and means that the claim that a single vendor provides better reliability is not relevant and fairly hollow. You can read the full article here.

As some of the comments on the article point out, quality support from your networking vendor is of paramount importance. We here at Vyatta agree and think our customers say it best.

Open Source Juicer: Virtualization + Open Source = A Revolution in Networking

Dave Roberts — 2007-11-30T16:32:47+00:00

Rob said it, not me. Well, actually, I was discussing virtualization and networking with Rob before he said it, so I'm sure that helped clarify his thinking. His conclusion is spot-on.

During the discussion, Rob made a really good point that his blog post didn't state: In today's world, every IT purchase must be understood in light of virtualization. It's simply that big of a fundamental technology. When he first said that to me, I had to take a step back. Is that really true? I wondered. Yup, that is true. Wow. We have come a long way from a few years ago when nobody even knew what virtualization was.

Fortunately, it's fairly easy to see where Vyatta stands on virtualization, at least the current thinking. This is sure to shift in the future as our community drives forward with bigger and better virtualized ideas.

Vblogatta: Broncos on MNF again

Allan Leinwand — 2007-11-20T07:09:21+00:00

I just found out that the Broncos are on Monday Night Football tonight. I'm really going to try to not torture myself like last time. Repeat after me three times: "I will not watch the Broncos lose again on Monday Night. I will not watch the Broncos lose again on Monday Night. I will not watch the Broncos lose again on Monday Night." Wish me luck on avoiding inevitable pain and sorrow....

UPDATE: I just read this morning that the Broncos actually won. Repeat after me: "A single win does not equal a winning streak. A single win does not equal a winning streak. A single win does not equal a winning streak."

Open Source Juicer: x86 continues to dominate HPC

Dave Roberts — 2007-11-14T09:49:03+00:00

This morning, I saw that a new edition of the Top 500 Supercomputers list was released. This blog entry contains the highlights. Of note to me was the number of system that were using x86:

A total of 354 systems (70.8 percent) now use Intel processors. This is up from six months ago (289 systems, 57.8 percent) and represents the largest share for Intel chips in the TOP500 ever. The AMD Opteron family, which passed the IBM Power processors a year ago, remained the second most common processor family with 78 systems (15.6 percent), down from 105 systems (21 percent) six months ago. 61 systems (12.2 percent) use IBM Power processors, down from 85 systems (17 percent) six months ago.

If you total the Intel and AMD contributions, you'll find that x86 represented more than 86% of the Top 500 supercomputers. If there is any doubt that "commodity" hardware is conquering the world, this should set you back a bit. It's true that the #1 and #2 systems on the list are non-x86 systems (PowerPC-based IBM BlueGene, to be exact), but it's clear that systems based on mainstream processors are the norm for those optimizing the cost/performance tradeoff.

I think the situation in high-performance computing (HPC) is indicative of things to come in networking. The #1 position on the Top 500 list is a very purpose-built system using unusual hardware for the utmost in performance. As you go down the list, most of the systems become standard x86 boxes ganged together using Gigabit Ethernet or Infiniband.

In the networking world, we have a couple of different types of systems. We obviously have very high speed L2/L3 switching fabrics. These systems are "fast but dumb," and are all based on ASICs. They will continue to be based on ASICs, but the ASICs will continue to become more commodity, increasingly coming from the likes of Broadcom and Marvell. The other type of system is something I'll call "complex processing," for lack of a better term. These are systems that are "smarter, but slower." They perform deep packet inspection and generally handle higher-level application processing. While these systems may use dedicated ASIC functionality to accelerate specific subfunctions (e.g. crypto hardware), they will increasingly be dominated by x86 processors for the high-level processing.

Of course, Vyatta is developing the software to run those systems and we believe that software will increasingly be open source.

Vblogatta: Cross-post: GigaOm - The Time Has Come for IPv6

Allan Leinwand — 2007-11-07T06:20:15+00:00

Here's a post I wrote for Om on the upcoming transition that may finally be upon us - it's time to learn IPv6. Really, we mean it this time. :) You can read the post here.

Open Source Juicer: One more reason why Vyatta makes sense

Dave Roberts — 2007-11-05T09:07:03+00:00

Back in May, Brad Reese blogged about the The insanity of Cisco software relicensing on Network World's Cisco Subnet Blog. In it, he describes the pinch Cisco is putting on people who buy used Cisco gear.

Now, you'd think that buying used gear would be a reasonable thing to do if you're looking to save money on equipment. In fact, businesses buy used gear all the time. In the real world, I can buy a used car and I can still take it to a certified mechanic. In the real world, I can buy a used fax machine, used copy machine, or a used computer, and still buy a service contract. The act of purchasing the equipment and the service contract are two different decisions, and manufacturers generally honor a used equipment buy.

In Cisco-world, that's not true. Cisco forces everybody to "relicense" its gear when it's acquired on the used or gray markets. The relicensing charges can be as great or greater than the price of purchasing a unit directly from Cisco. Brad specifically says, "Purchasing a Cisco software relicense for a used Cisco 2621XM router costs more than purchasing a Cisco Authorized Factory Refurbished CISCO2621XM-RF unit from Cisco's inventory."

What's up with that? Well, what's up with that is that Cisco is a hardware company and they make their billions (with a B) selling hardware. No hardware sale = no 70% profit margin = no bonus for Cisco execs. In Cisco-world, the used equipment market is a bad, bad place. Consequently, Cisco is out to kill the used equipment market by making it economically unattractive to buy your gear from anybody but Cisco. Sure, they'll sell you a "Cisco Authorized Factory Refurb," but it's still going to cost you.

Several Vyatta customers have come to us after facing this insanity. They figured they could pick up some used Cisco gear fairly cheap and then call Cisco for a support contract. No deal. Before buying Cisco SmartNet, you'll have to "relicense" your gear.

Consequently, for less than the price of a Cisco "relicense" fee, Vyatta customers have been able to switch. Welcome to the real world. Welcome to Vyatta. If you have switched, you might want to write Cisco a Dear John letter.

Vblogatta: I may be paranoid, but how did MSFT know?

Allan Leinwand — 2007-11-04T14:06:34+00:00

I was having some challenges this past weekend on my home desktop PC running Windows XP. I was getting the dreaded hang at the Windows Splash screen (the where the flag logo shows up and the green bars scroll along the bottom of the screen) that I could not solve. Nothing had changed on my machine and I had tried all sorts of options to get my system back running based on some research I did on the Net: ran chkdsk multiple times, tried multiple different restore points, booted into safe mode, checked msconfig options and so forth. Let's just say that I spent a number of hours working on the issue to no avail and I was more than a bit frustrated.

In a last ditch effort, I was doing one last chkdsk and booting off my Windows Recovery Disk into safe mode. While the chkdsk was running (about a 3 hour process) I finally decided to take the advice of my friend Om to "get a mac." For those that know me, I used to be violently anti-Mac based on a horrific experience in the early 90s with a AppleBook that I was forced to use that continually gave me a bomb message with "Sorry a system error occurred." But, I've grown older and maybe wiser to look beyond the past. So, while my PC was running chkdsk for the third time I decided to boot my laptop and surf www.apple.com to check out the options on the iMac and MacBook Pro. I must admit they look very cool!

And just as I was checking prices, I swear, my PC completed the chkdsk and rebooted perfectly. It was up and running, no issues to be found. For fun, I rebooted it twice and it came back up perfectly (I still have no idea what the issue was or how I solved it).

So, I may be paranoid, but if AT&T was watching my web browsing and sent that information over to Microsoft, did an automated process kick in and fix my PC to avoid me becoming an Apple convert? Of course, if that was really the case, I would like to think that Microsoft would have solved the problem on my PC before I reached the frustration point of pricing a Mac. But, I wonder....

Open Source Juicer: Ben King rocks

Dave Roberts — 2007-10-31T11:23:19+00:00

Ashlee Vance over at The Register just posted what has to be one of the funniest press stories on the VC3 launch. I was laughing out loud. My guess is that Ashlee was laughing out loud about the Dear John page.

As icing on the proverbial cake, the comments section saw some back-and-forth between the typical Cisco fanboys and those who know the real deal.

Somebody named Michael H delivered the first blow:

Their entire product line is based around commodity PC hardware. Performance is horrid compared to gear from any real vendor, where traffic is switched at a hardware level using dedicated ASICs.

The whitepaper on their site favorably compares the performance of a modern PC to an old, small Cisco router designed to route T1s (1.5mbit/s), something even a 486 could handle.

This brings out the old "Cisco uses dedicated ASICs" stuff (again). In fact, as we have talked about numerous times in this blog, that's simply untrue. Many of Cisco's low and mid-range routers use software forwarding (everything from Linksys up through the 7200 uses software, I'm told by the former Cisco employees now working at Vyatta, sometimes on MIPS-based cores, and other times on more pedestrian processors). I'm assuming "the whitepaper" on the Vyatta site actually refers to the Tolly test report comparing Vyatta running on a Dell PowerEdge 860 to the Cisco 2821. The 2821 is hardly "old," being part of the recently-introduced ISR family.

Ben King then makes one of the best replies:

I have used Vyatta and Cisco extensively, and I have probably completed one of the larger Vyatta deployments by a UK company (company WAN spanning 6 countries).

A few responses:

1) Vyatta vs Cisco, I am sure there is a point where the high end Ciscos out perform PC opensource based solutions, however at the commodity level this simply isn't the case. Bang for buck when you look at what you get with Vyatta feature and performance wise the equivalent Cisco is way way more expensive.

2) Vyatta vs Other Opensource, the argument is absolutely right, Vyatta does nothing that you can't get anywhere else on the opensource community, we actually use a Debian/iptables/imq solution elsewhere in our ISP business very successfully, and I would recommend if you are doing anything specialist you stick with the bespoke route. However Vyatta is extremely quick to deploy, give me a bare metal server, a Vyatta CD, and I will have an installed working Vyatta router with base config in 10 minutes, you simply can't do this with a custom build.

3) Cisco vs Opensource, long raging argument, we run our albeit small ISP all on Linux opensource routing equipment because its cheaper. Where Cisco wins though is support and the high end gear.

4) Support. Where Vyatta really wins is the support, if you decided go with Vyatta pay the subscription fee and get the support, its really superb.

Ben has blogged about Vyatta and his experience before. It's a good read. Ben, if you're out there, drop me a note (dave at Vyatta). I'd like to hook you up with some press people.

Open Source Juicer: Answering Terry Slattery

Dave Roberts — 2007-10-31T08:33:37+00:00

A couple of days ago, Brad Reese over at Network World's Cisco Subnet blogged about the VC3 release. The posting did a good job of talking about Vyatta and some of the advantages we have (along with a nice highlight of the Dear John web page).

Brad then asked Terry Slattery, CTO of Netcordia, to comment on Vyatta and the announcement. Terry did so in his blog at the Netcordia web site.

In response, I sent a note to both Brad and Terry with some of my thoughts on the points that Terry raised. Now, it's important to remember that both Brad and Terry are hardcore Cisco alums. Brad was instrumental in putting together the Cisco training and education program. Terry worked on some fundamental IOS features around things like the CLI. (Remember tab-completion in IOS? That was his.)

So, here was my response:

Dear Brad,

I recently read your article quoting some of Terry Slattery's blog post about Vyatta. Terry is clearly an educated skeptic, which is wise when it comes to networking. There are many good answers to Terry's questions, however, and I felt compelled to provide them in order to clear the air and help others who may be asking themselves the same thing.

First, let me say that often debates of this nature get turned into all-or-nothing contests where the participants want to suggest that their particular point of view will reign supreme and the opposing point of view is utterly bankrupt. I don't believe this, and I don't think Terry does either. Like it or not, the world is gray. When this debate is long over, neither Cisco nor Vyatta will have 100% market share. And Vyatta doesn't need 100% share in order to be a success to our customers and the market.

As a background to this, I'll say that Vyatta has customers in just about every market segment you can think of. A partial list includes small business, medium enterprise, hosting service providers, VoIP providers, wireless service providers, federal and municipal government, financial, educational, media, retail, manufacturing, legal, health care, and aerospace. Some of these customers are documented in case studies on the Vyatta web site. In certain cases, we're in branch offices, and other times at the cores of networks.

Okay, let's get to Terry's comments...

"For small remote site use, it may well be acceptable to use the Vyatta router, provided you don't also need a local switch and voice capability, which the ISR can provide."

Let's parse this out. First, it depends what you call "small." It's a frequent tactic in technology arguments to suggest that something would only work for somebody's grandmother, but not in "real life." (The proprietary operating system vendors used to claim this about Linux, for instance.) This is absolutely not the case with Vyatta.

While it's true that there are features in the ISR that are not (yet) present in Vyatta, not all customers need those. Many customers prefer to keep their voice infrastructure products, even if VoIP-based, separate than their data infrastructure products--the network still carries the traffic, but the products are non-integrated. This is not to suggest that integration is not valued by some, only that it is not valued by all. Vyatta is perfectly happy today addressing the part of the market that doesn't need all the ISR widgets and doodads. We'll add the widgets and doodads over time, too, and we'll have a better solution for that part of the market.

Second, I'm a bit flummoxed about the cost structure of the integrated switching modules for the ISR. Looking at the web site of a large online merchant, I can buy an NM-16ESW, 16-port Fast Ethernet switching module for the ISR, for $1076. A Cisco Catalyst 2960-24TT, 24-port Fast Ethernet switch with two Gigabit Ethernet uplinks, only costs $856. And the 2960 is a top-shelf option. If I'm willing to forgo the Cisco logo, I can get a Netgear JFS524, 24-port Fast Ethernet switch for only $99. While Cisco charges 10x the price of the Netgear for the ISR module, it makes up for it by giving you fewer ports... Okay, so that's not a fair comparison. How about, while Cisco charges 25% more for the NM-16ESW than the 2960, it makes up for it by giving you fewer ports.

"If your interface is a set of T1s or similar speed links, then software based forwarding will work well (higher speeds are possible, depending on the hardware you use, as demonstrated in the Tolly Group comparison). At higher speeds on bigger boxes, Cisco will win -- it's simply a game of moving packets between interfaces at the highest speed the hardware will enable. And Cisco has the hardware at the high end."

It's important to place Vyatta in context. A lot of people suggest that Vyatta is a toy because it can't route for the backbone of the Internet. It's true that Vyatta won't be used by a tier-1 carrier to handle the Internet backbone anytime soon, but this was never a claim Vyatta made. We have been very clear about our performance claims and have published a lot of data on our web site substantiating our claims. (As a side note, it's a lot harder to lie about performance claims when you're an open source vendor and people can simply download the code and test it for themselves. It's much easier to bluff on performance issues when testing a claim costs thousands of dollars to buy the device under test.)

It's also important to note that many Cisco mid-range routers are software-based. The whole ISR series, in fact, routes packets on a MIPS processor. The Cisco 7200 is also software-based.

At the end of the day, the proof is in the pudding, and Vyatta's pudding tastes pretty good. The Tolly test actually demonstrates that Vyatta works well even for large links, far exceeding T1 speeds. In the test, Vyatta showed a minimum forwarding performance at 64-byte packets of approximately 280 Mbps. This was double the performance of the 2821. The maximum performance was over 2 Gbps at larger packet sizes (greater than 1024-bytes). And that performance was limited in this case by the two Gigabit Ethernet ports. Had we added more ports, we could have gone even faster. We didn't do this because Cisco charges over $2,500 (street) for the 1-port Gigabit Ethernet card for the ISR series (HWIC-1GE). It simply wasn't cost effective to go further.

Finally, this test was performed with on a 2.8 GHz Celeron processor--something that is basically obsolete at this point in time. Faster processors will deliver better performance, at a consequent increase in cost.

This is not to suggest that ASIC-based forwarding doesn't have its place. Certainly, ASICs can provide a huge increase in speed (along with a huge decrease in flexibility). If you're trying to route traffic at terabits per second in the Internet core, you'll need ASICs to do it, no doubt about it. But many (most?) people aren't trying to do that. Which is one reason that Cisco 2800 ISRs outsell CRS-1s in volume.

So, to summarize, while ASICs are a great match for anything running at more than 10 Gbps, many networking systems operate at much lower speeds. This includes anything in the Cisco 1800 to Cisco 7200 range. If you're buying these products, Vyatta is a good match and can probably save you a lot of money. We have had customers replace every Cisco model in this range with a Vyatta solution and we're confident that we can solve many problems in this space.

"Some of the other features that I didn't see listed in about 30 minutes of poking around the Vyatta web site and forums: QoS, MPLS, and Netflow/sFlow/IPFIX."

You didn't need to poke around that long. Vyatta has a wiki page with a complete list of features that we don't yet support that people have told us they need: http://www.vyatta.com/twiki/bin/view/Community/TopEnhancements We're committed to being transparent about what we have and don't have and allowing the community to help prioritize where we go moving forward. On this page, you're welcome to vote for features you think are important.

So, yes, Vyatta doesn't (yet) include those features and a whole lot of other ones. That said, QoS is currently scheduled to be released in 1Q08. MPLS and Netflow have been highly requested but are currently unscheduled.

"The question in my mind is whether they will be able to implement the features that customers need in order to be competitive with the likes of Cisco and the other router vendors (don't forget about 3Com, Adtran, and the other smaller router players)."

Pulling a paraphrased quote from another day and time, "The question in my mind is whether Linux will be able to implement the features that customers need in order to be competitive with the likes of Windows, Solaris, HP-UX, AIX, and a bunch of other smaller UNIXes." I'd just submit by analogy that open source has proved itself very capable of competing with proprietary offerings over time. While you may be correct that Vyatta can't meet a particular customer need today, open source adapts quickly--it's sort of the Borg of the technology universe. Would you honestly want to bet against open source in the long run? If the answer is no, then perhaps the only debate is about timing, and that's where I'd remind you that customers, like the world, are not black and white. They all have different needs and desires.

"I'm curious just how big a network a single Vyatta can handle. Leave a comment if you know of any big ones."

Vyatta can handle fairly large networks. Try us. We have multiple customers running full tables with more than 10 BGP peers. In fact, given that Cisco often charges $5000 per GB of memory and Vyatta leverages the x86 ecosystem to provide a GB of memory for less than $100, Vyatta customers can handle large networks without breaking the bank. We have customers that have purchased more than 100 systems and we have established the partnerships with Hyperic and Alterpoint to help manage networks this large and larger.

"* The Tolly Group comparison was done with UDP packets, which would may not take advantage of a cache that the Cisco might use to improve the performance of TCP. It would be interesting to see the same test done using a set of TCP flows."

The Tolly test was a standard RFC 2544 performance test. In fact, most packet forwarding tests are run with UDP rather than TCP because it makes it easier to set up test equipment (a Spirent SmartBits in this case). I didn't realize that Cisco has problems with UDP. I don't think that using TCP would have changed the outcome, but perhaps it would. If somebody has data showing that Cisco has a UDP deficiency, we'd be happy to look at it.

Cheers,

-- Dave Roberts
Vice President of Strategy and Marketing
Vyatta, Inc.

Open Source Juicer: VC3 has left the building

Dave Roberts — 2007-10-31T08:21:16+00:00

Well, we got Vyatta Community Edition 3 (VC3) out the door on Monday. That was big. We're shooting to release a community edition twice a year. VC2 came out in February. The downloads have been phenomenal.

Vblogatta: Seriously - why do I do this to myself?

Allan Leinwand — 2007-10-30T09:34:33+00:00

If you read this blog you know I have sworn off the Denver Broncos in 2007. I was doing good with my fasting - I had not watched a single minute of any of their games nor did I even know where they stood in the standings. But, when they played last night on Monday Night Football, it was hard to resist settling in to watch them play. I mean come on - a re-match of Elway's SuperBowl victory over Favre and the Packers?!? What football fan could resist?

But, I did resist. I did not listen to the game on the way home from work on ESPN. I did not come home early to watch the game and I declined a few invitations to go to a local bar and watch the game with friends. I was feeling good about my abstinence.

I came home, did some errands, ate some dinner and did some work. I was doing just fine.... And then, I decided to sit down and relax in front of the tube. The tube came on to ESPN and I saw the score: Denver 13, Green Bay 13, start of overtime. I actually said aloud, "Well, this may be worth watching!" I felt a little guilty for breaking my promise, but seriously, what could it hurt?

And then came the shock therapy. Denver kicks off and on the first play from scrimmage Favre throws an 82-yard touchdown pass (I think it was some sort of Monday Night Football record) to end the game. In literally 16 seconds of my time spent watching the game it was over. At least I did not waste 4 hours watching the Denver Donkeys - I got the same treatment in an efficient 16 seconds.

Vblogatta: Cross-post: GigaOm - How Network Statistics Can Make Search Better And More Relevant

Allan Leinwand — 2007-10-28T19:33:22+00:00

Here's another cross-post on a piece I wrote for Om on using network traffic statistics to produce more relevant search results. This post was inspired by an excellent paper by Joe Weinman of AT&T that you can find here. I really thought this post would spark some major concerns over privacy, but since it did not I guess everyone knows that whatever you do on the Internet (email, IM, VoIP, web browsing, etc.) is public knowledge.

Vblogatta: The Day the Routers Died...

Allan Leinwand — 2007-10-28T08:33:26+00:00

If you have not seen this video from the RIPE 55 Meeting last week in Amsterdam at the Grand Hotel Krasnapolsky (great place - been there a few times) then you're missing out. Classic networking geek video - try to see how many of the technical references you can catch.

My favorite verse: "And now we've all lost our purpose.. my cisco shares completely worthless..." Enjoy!

Vblogatta: Cross-post: NewTeeVee post on infinite bandwidth

Allan Leinwand — 2007-10-11T00:18:39+00:00

Today NewTeeVee (part of the GigaOm network) posted a blog I wrote about how the Internet would change if bandwidth was infinite. It's good that I have a fairly thick skin as some of the comments on the post were less than constructive - and it got even worse on digg.

If you're up for joining the fray, I'd welcome your comments and thoughts on the topic!

Vblogatta: The Guardian: Ignoring open source is costing us dear

Allan Leinwand — 2007-09-20T08:24:00+00:00

I found a great article in the Guardian today by Victor Keegan about how ignoring open source software (mainly Linux and Firefox) is costing the UK significant amount of revenues. What I found most interesting is that the author found a prevailing attitude toward open source as "anything that is free can't be any good." If the UK is getting ready to save some money with Linux and Firefox, wait until they realize that they can reduce their networking costs too using Vyatta! You can read the full article here.

Vblogatta: Cross-posts on data centers over at GigaOm

Allan Leinwand — 2007-09-17T23:53:25+00:00

I've been thinking a lot about the future of data centers and the relevant systems and network architectures. Not following the Broncos has given me some free time on Sundays :)

Om posted my piece on the current revolution for data center architectures last week - it sure does look like we're headed back to the future. It's clear to me that virtualization is going to play a key role in the data center of the future and that looks vaguely familiar to network architectures of the past. You can read the post here.

I have also been very interested in making data centers more eco-friendly and wrote about this over at Earth2Tech (a GigaOm site) here. If you're a fan of Vyatta, then you know our software runs on servers that are Energy Star certified already!

P.S. Yes, I do know the Broncos are 2-0. I have not watched a minute of them in 2007 yet :)

Open Source Juicer: Last week

Dave Roberts — 2007-09-05T12:00:03+00:00

I'm glad last week is over. There was just too much going on here at Vyatta. In addition to releasing Vyatta Subscription and Community Editions 2.2, we also moved our office from San Mateo to Belmont, CA. The offices are within spitting distance of each other, so it really isn't as big of a move as it sounds. We're now about a quarter mile from Oracle world HQ in Redwood Shores. The city boundaries right here are strange and they all come together in some strange harmonic convergence that results in a small move jumping from city-to-city wildly.

We finally grew out of the original Vyatta bunker. We just didn't have sitting room for anybody anymore. In the new office, we have room to spread out, and (most importantly!) more conference rooms. We only had two conference rooms in the old building and it seemed like somebody was always in both of them. We had taken to calling a small patio table in the courtyard of the old building "Conference Room 3." That worked well during the spring/summer, but it's going to get rainy here in a few months, so that solution had a definitely lifetime associated with it.

The folks here that coordinated the move did an excellent job for the rest of us. It was as smooth and painless as you could possibly imagine, though there were certainly a lot of hiccups in making that happen. The planning was perfect. All my boxes arrived right where they were supposed to and I walked in yesterday and just plugged in my PC and got to work. Easy!

So, mixed in with all that packing for the move, we also released version 2.2 of the Subscription Edition and Community Edition this week. This was a big release. We ended up posting a full ISO because the changes were so significant and we wanted all the new downloaders to have the latest and greatest. Unfortunately, we had a hiccup with the package upgrade instructions for existing users that caused some confusion. Hopefully, we got that all straightened out. We had a last minute change in the procedure from the VC2.2 beta release and we also missed a change to a package name from the Subscription Edition to the Community Edition in the release notes. As much as we try to double and triple check things, it seems like something always gets through. Unfortunately, it's never the thing you expect.

In any case, if you're upgrading from an earlier version, follow the instructions in the latest version of the release notes on the web site. Those are now correct and you should have no problems. If you have any trouble, post to the vyatta-users mailing list.

Open Source Juicer: SSE4 adds CRC32 and string instructions

Dave Roberts — 2007-09-05T11:09:52+00:00

I have written a few times before about how standard microprocessors are increasing in power very quickly. This morning, I was scanning a whitepaper from Intel about upcoming SSE4 instruction set additions. In addition to some string searching instructions that could improve the performance of everything from databases to virus scanners to intrusion detection systems, Intel has also included a CRC32 instruction. CRC32 is used a lot as an error detection technique on low-level communication protocols. For instance, the data of every Ethernet or WiFi frame is protected by a CRC32. The addition of this instruction to the x86 instruction set is significant as it is a recognition that data communications is an important application area, whether for a server or a piece of network infrastructure. As I have stated before, commodity silicon continues to grow more powerful...

Vblogatta: Cross post - CSCO vs MSFT on GigaOm

Allan Leinwand — 2007-09-03T17:20:11+00:00

I've just posted a new piece I've written on GigaOm on CSCO vs MSFT that is found here. As you can tell, those of us involved with Vyatta are watching Cisco from multiple angles! :)

Please let me know your thoughts!

Open Source Juicer: LinuxWorld Postmortem

Dave Roberts — 2007-08-17T18:15:20+00:00

I survived. I really did. I didn't think I would, but I did. Yes, LinuxWorld was that tiring. I was at the show all day on Tuesday, a lot of Wednesday, and all Thursday afternoon. Thankfully, the show was lively and had grown substantially since the last time I was there a couple of years ago. People were everywhere, talking open source and what it could do for you. The conference sessions were well attended. This all bodes well for both the overall IT economy and open-source in particular.

The Vyatta Open Arcade Classic went off perfectly. Tuesday at noontime, I wasn't so sure how things were going to work out. When the company that rented us the classic video games arrived to drop them off at the Thirsty Bear, Defender wouldn't power up. That was going to be a big problem because Larry Augustin was almost maniacal that he wanted to play Defender. The company apologized and said they'd go back to the warehouse and get a Galaga game. That seemed like a reasonable compromise. Later in the afternoon, they returned with both a Galaga game and a replacement circuit board that they thought might fix the Defender game. Fortunately, it worked and both games were up and running for the party--bonus!

The party was very well attended. We had a lot of people tell us it was the best party at LinuxWorld. People loved the both the theme and the location. The loft of the Thirsty Bear was packed, but not such that people couldn't move. There was the right amount of chit-chatting and hardcore game playing. I met many people I had previously only interacted with online--it was nice to put names with faces. We cautiously called this the "inaugural" LinuxWorld Vyatta party, but I'm pretty confident this has become the "first annual" LinuxWorld Vyatta party.

My favorite line of the party happened early in the evening. Jeremy Allison was just starting to play his first game of Asteroids. Jeremy dropped in the token, hit the Play button, and addressed the screen. As soon as his ship appeared on the first level, Jeremy mutters "Hmmmm... there are a lot more rocks than I remember..." Indeed. Ain't that always the case.

Thanks to everybody who attended. We were grateful for all the new friends and old friends who dropped by. We're particularly grateful to our open-source "luminaries:" Jeremy Allison, Larry Augustin, Simon Crosby, Mike Schroepfer, and Jacob Taylor. You guys were great. The final high-scores for the night were as follows. Over $5000 total will be donated to the list of projects and organizations listed on behalf of the high score holders, the open-source luminaries, and Vyatta.

GAME	PROJECT	WINNER	HIGH SCORE
PAC MAN	SQLite	Kevin Weiss	28510
Defender	Samba	Larry Augustin	35575
Asteroids	Free Software Foundation	Jerry DelRio	16860
Donkey Kong	Ext	Peder Ulander	18500
Centipede	Linux Foundation	JC Utter	38018

On Thursday afternoon, I presented a conference session titled The State of Open Source Networking: Where It's At, and Where It's Going. The session was during the last timeslot of the conference and I was a bit worried that nobody would show up. It's pretty common for everybody to leave the show early on the last day and being "tail-end Charlie" typically means you're talking to a crowd of one or two attendees. Surprisingly, that was not the case. Many attendees showed up and seemed to both understand and receive the message I was preaching.

So, chalk up another successful event.

Vblogatta: My Year without the Denver Broncos

Allan Leinwand — 2007-08-14T09:38:22+00:00

I will not be a fan of the Denver Broncos in 2007. There, I've said it....

Many of you know that I grew up in the Denver area and have been a rabid Denver Broncos fan for over 20 years. I was there for Morton to Moses, Norris Weese, Randy Gradishar, the strike year, the bad and then great Elway years, the championship games against the Browns, the Mile High Salute and Jake the Snake. When I moved out to the SF Bay Area I was still a Broncos fan, against the rabid and ridiculous tide of the 49ers (or 40-whiners) fans. I was still there after the 55-10 SuperBowl debacle - and I survived in the heart of the 40-whiners territory.

Although, I must admit over the past few years I have not committed myself as much as I had in the past to the team as both work and home kept me busy on the weekends. And, of course, I can't watch every game here as I used to back in Colorado. That being said, every week I would scan the game listings and see if by some luck of the draw the Broncos would be a nationally televised game or even on Sunday or Monday night and then attempt to plan my weekend accordingly. Even if I could not watch the game, I checked the score via the web nearly hourly.

For the Broncos, 2005 was a great vintage. They went 13-3 and had a good shot at the SuperBowl but lost to the Steelers in the AFC Championship game. And then came 2006.... I was set for another great season and hoped the team would go further than in 2006. Things started off great, but faded into the second half. Even that seemed fine to me, I've been through tough seasons as a fan before and I could endure this one too.

Until the last game of the season. The Broncos simply had to beat the hapless 40-whiners at home in Denver and they would stumble into the playoffs. The game was televised on a Sunday afternoon and I was ready. I cleared the deck of all plans and got into game mode. Needless to say, things went badly. The Broncos (as my friend Mark always says) "played down to the level of their opponent" and lost in overtime (Rick Wallace, if you are out there, I owe you $5).

As the shock of losing the game set in, I realized that I had just spent more than four hours of my life rooting for my team and they had disappointed me again. I know fans should be fans forever and never waver, but it was at this moment that I decided that I would not be a Broncos fan in 2007. No Sunday afternoons watching games, no checking of scores, nothing. I'm going cold turkey.

Well, sort of. If the Broncos are playing in January 2008, you can count on me being there. And, somehow, My Yahoo! page still shows Broncos scores. In fact, I did happen to notice that in their first pre-season game this week they beat the 40-whiners. Not like I noticed or that I am a fan or anything.... :)