My time at Networking Field Day 22

I flew home yesterday from Silicon Valley. I just spent three days of intense learning from 10 different companies at Networking Field Day 22 (#NFD22). It went quickly even though there was a lot to sit through. I am still organizing my thoughts so I can write some posts on what I learned. In the meantime, here is a quick one on my time there.

It started on Tuesday flying out to SFO airport and then driving down to my home for a few days in Santa Clara. After checking into my hotel room, my experience started. The first night was about housekeeping. I met all the delegates over some good food and drinks. That is when Tom Hollingsworth (@NetworkingNerd) started things by giving us some details for the week. This included what to do (what not to do) and what to expect. Additionally, we did our gift swap, which is always a fun time especially with some of the awesome wrapping jobs – the My Little Pony wrapping was a big hit.

The next day started with two presentations at the hotel. The first was from DriveNets (https://drivenets.com) on their product for service providers. While I do not work for a service provider, I can see how their product could revolutionize networking by allowing service providers to move to white box devices while still maintaining the high availability of monolithic core switches. The second presentations was from Gluware (http://gluware.com/) about their intelligent orchestration and automation system. Their product is something that seems useful for an enterprise and they gave out a link to test drive it – I may have more to write after I look into that.

After those two presentations (and a quick lunch at the hotel), we headed over to Riverbed (http://www.riverbed.com/) to hear about their take on SD-WAN including some network security (hooray for security). I have had some experience with their SD-WAN solution so I may have more to write on this presentation. The last presentation of the day was at CloudGenix (http://www.cloudgenix.com) with another SD-WAN solution. Their presentation was very good and we discussed some really interesting concepts they are working on. I think they have a hot product and I am not just saying that because the room we were in was so small that the air conditioning could not keep up (sitting next to the projector did not help). After that, we went to dinner and then back to the hotel to get some sleep.

Our second day started at Forward Networks (https://www.forwardnetworks.com/) to hear about their network modeling and analysis toolsets. Their presentation on a week in the life of a network engineer went over really well. The standout to me was the “middle of the week” when the “engineer” has to get to his kid’s recital and there is an intermittent problem with the web site – it included dusting off the network binder including real dust.

After lunch, we drove over to Arista to hear from them but first from one of their partners: Kentik (http://www.kentik.com). Kentik is another service provider orientated company so it is not something I would use at my work but it is probably something I am already taking advantage of, indirectly of course. What their product does it offer some good visibility into Internet traffic. Our last presentation of the day was from Arista (http://www.arista.com/) on their networking gear. We heard about their software methodology, which included why it is so much better than another very large networking company that a lot more companies use. It was easy to hear their passion on why they think they have a better product. Of course, they are not the only network gear company.

The last day started at Broadcom (https://www.broadcom.com) on their processors. This was their first time at Networking Field Day and it was a wonderful topic. They sell to equipment manufacturers and I know I have had the benefit to use their processors. Seeing their Tomahawk 4 processor against a Cisco mini-UADP chip is unbelievable – just look below. Of course, it is an unfair comparison as they are used differently. I think the most interesting concept is that they build different processors because there are different styles of networks. This is one presentation that I still need to digest and re-watch because there was so much in it.

We then traveled to Juniper (http://www.juniper.net/us/en/) to hear about their network automation. Juniper is a networking company that has been around for a while. I have made jokes about them in the past, mostly about how they are still in business, but their presentation showed some really good work using automation to make networking easier while still allowing senior-level engineers the ability to dive into a CLI. After their presentation, I can tell you they are still around for valid reasons.

Our last stop was at VMWare (http://www.vmware.com/) to hear about using their NSX product to secure containerized services like Kubernetes. Last year, VMWare acquired AVI Networks and we heard how that integration has been going. I think it was great that the presentation started with NSX securing containerized services and ended with how the AVI load balancer solution has been integrated into the same mix.

It was an intense three days and I am so glad I had the opportunity to be involved. I am still trying to mentally digest everything I heard. My plan is to go back over my notes from each presentation so I can bring my experiences to you, the reader. Of course, I will have to watch some of the recordings (especially the ones from Broadcom) to help with that process. In the meantime, head on over to https://techfieldday.com/event/nfd22/ and scroll to the Presentation Calendar section for links to each company including the videos. Let me know if you have any topics you want to hear more about.