[c-nsp] Leaked Video or Not (Linux and Cisco for internal Sales folks)

Fri Jun 22 10:06:25 EDT 2018

Packets will be pushed in Linux when Broadcom releases SDKs, Mellanox
already did...i guess

https://netdevconf.org/0x12/session.html?building-a-better-nos-with-linux-and-switchdev

Description

Whitebox switches, disaggregation, and open networking
are all the rage today. While the choice in white box
switches and "open" networking operating systems (NOS)
has proliferated in recent years, switching ASICs are
still predominantly programmed using SDKs and those SDKs
are primarily driven by userspace controllers. The
adherence to SDKs imposes a design constraint that has a
huge impact on the architecture of a NOS, its choices for
user APIs (how the switch is configured, debugged and
monitored) and the performance of the control plane.

Over the past few years a lot of effort has been put into
a new approach for Linux - i.e., switchdev and related
in-kernel APIs. The result allows for a simpler, cleaner
NOS that fully leverages the Linux kernel with the ASIC
managed like any other hardware in the system -- by a
driver running in the kernel. However, adoption of
switchdev by ASIC vendors has been lacking, with only
one ASIC vendor at this point writing a driver that
works with switchdev.

This talk discusses typical software architectures for
network operating systems and introduces a path for
transitioning SDK based solutions to the switchdev
model.

On Fri, Jun 22, 2018 at 7:00 AM, Tails Pipes <tailsnpipes at gmail.com> wrote:

> Mojatau, Big switch, cumulus, arista and even juniper are trying to move
> networking to a better place, but not cisco. they do contribute to it,
> there is xdp, ebpf, quagga, vrfs in linux...etc < do you want to deny those
> ? just because you have a ccie and you are comfortable being a cisco
> network guy, well you dont live alone in the world, others also need to be
> able to run networks without having to work on it for 10 years.
>
> What do you mean that no one is pushing packets in linux ? Isnt that the
> point of all the linux networking ? are you saying that the vendors
> mentioned are closing their work ? can you give an educated opinion who
> exactly is not allowing packets to be pushed in linux ? is it Linus
> trovalds and the NetDev folks or is it the community of people like you
> that are so comfortable in their own skin that they dont allow innovation
> to take course.
>
> Linux and BSD are both operating systems that are well documented and many
> people can understand and work with but if you are so comfortable with IOS
> variants, that doesnt mean that every one is....can i operate networks
> without having years of experience and implicitly forced support by cisco,
> I am sick of having to learn all the cisco specific terms to all sorts of
> different boxes and technologies, all their tools and super expensive AS
> engagements, but thats not what this post is about. its about how a company
> is making use of free software and refusing to allow it to flourish, the
> microsoft of networking is cisco.
>
> https://blogs.cisco.com/news/myth-busting-white-box-
> switches-are-no-bargain
>
> This is about a company that smiles in my face, telling me that Linux is
> bad for me and they are using it in all their products, in that video, the
> speaker says we can leverage all the linux work for free.
>
> Is Cisco working on XDP ? https://netdevconf.org/0x12/schedule.html I dont
> see Cisco's name here but others are.
>
> can you easily answer this question ? why packets are not pushed in linux ?
> is it because of big switch, cumulus, pica8 ?
>
> can you push packets in linux without writing code to do that ? who is
> writing that code ?
>
> this is supposedly a community effort, something that older generations
> dont understand.
>
> On Fri, Jun 22, 2018 at 1:27 AM, Saku Ytti <saku at ytti.fi> wrote:
>
> > Hey Tails Pipes,
> >
> > What do you mean by 'not making sense with the defense against open
> > source'?
> >
> > All their operating systems run linux, IOS-XE, IOS-XR, NXOS and more.
> >
> > And no one is (well at least shouldn't be) surprised that the obvious
> > motivation that drives linux use, is that you get booting OS, for
> > free, which actually works. Almost no vendor no longer maintains their
> > own booting OS. Huawei, Juniper, Cisco, Arista all boot Linux. Nokia
> > is one of the few who still write their own booting OS (forked off
> > vxworks years ago), which also means they can't bring easily and
> > cheaply new control-plane HW, and possible reason why they run Cavium
> > control-plane is because they've not written code to boot XEON.
> >
> > I see no reason why the video would be taken down, I didn't watch it
> > in its entirety as I'm not curious about Linux primer at this time,
> > but the sections you highlighted are in no way controversial.
> >
> > I'm unsure what argument you're trying to make about Cisco, open
> > source or Cumulus. Cumulus is, in my mind, no special vendor. Just
> > another vendor buying COTS chips and writing OS on them, like many
> > others. I'm not saying it's bad thing, I'm just saying they're in no
> > way disruptive in my mind. They're not doing packet pushing in Linux,
> > no one is. It's just booting OS, and OS to configure the
> > forwarding-plane.
> > Now some are looking anxiously at XEON for packet pushing, but even in
> > that case, you're not actually using Linux to push packets, granted
> > you're using open source, DPDK or equivalent, but even in that case,
> > the cost for PPS from INTC XEON is far worse than it is from BRCM. And
> > of course neither ITNC nor BRCM are in any meaningful way more 'open'.
> >
> > What would be disruptive is someone openly publishing their ASIC/NPU
> > specs and P4 compiler, so that we use vanillla linux kernel to drive
> > the forwarding-plane.
> >
> > On Fri, 22 Jun 2018 at 03:50, Tails Pipes <tailsnpipes at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > I went to CiscoLive last week, and i understood that they are
> definitely
> > > not making sense with the defense against open source and the direction
> > of
> > > LBN (Linux Based Networking) However, they still like to use Linux and
> > make
> > > money out of it. (minute 09:13), complete and utter bullish hypocrisy.
> > > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyC_T-u8Wsw
> > >
> > > Not sure if this is a leaked video or not, but i am kind of surprised
> > that
> > > this company is openly admitting these kind of ideas.
> > >
> > > What really ticked me to share this is when the executive in the video
> > > (Chuck Duffy) is openly admitting the competitive pressure, and how IOS
> > is
> > > inferior to Linux (minute 01:07), the way he spoke about IOS was
> > inferring
> > > that its classic or legacy and thats why its picked up in all their
> > > products.
> > >
> > > What i wasnt able to comprehend at all is why he mentioned Big switch
> and
> > > cumulus on minute 02:50, is this like a slip of truth or a real
> defining
> > > moment of a vendor’s life saying that  open stuff is a disruptive
> > > architecture ?
> > >
> > > Is Cisco moving to. subscription model because of Linux ? Is it that
> > > difficult to change Cisco to go Linux all the way ?
> > >
> > > ps. : it will probably be taken down soon.
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > cisco-nsp mailing list  cisco-nsp at puck.nether.net
> > > https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/cisco-nsp
> > > archive at http://puck.nether.net/pipermail/cisco-nsp/
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> >   ++ytti
> >
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