Month: March 2012

What might OpenFlow actually open up?

A few weeks ago, I attended the PacketPushers webinar on OpenFlow – a networking technology that, while not seeing widespread adoption as yet, is still creating a buzz on the networking scene.

It certainly busted a lot of myths and misconceptions folks in the audience may have had about OpenFlow, but the big questions it left me with are what OpenFlow stands to open up, and what effect it might have on many well established vendors who currently depend on selling “complete” pieces of networking hardware and software – the classic router, switch or firewall as we know it.

If I think back to my annoyances back in the early 2000’s it was of the amount of feature bloat creeping into network devices, while we still tended to have a lot of monolithic operating systems in use, so a bug in a feature that wasn’t even in use could crash the device, because the code would be running, even if it wasn’t in use. I was annoyed because there was nothing I could do other than apply kludgy workarounds, and nag the vendors to ship patched code. I couldn’t decide to rip that bit of code out and replace it with some fixed code myself. When the vendors finally shipped fixed code, it was a reboot to install it. I didn’t much like being so dependant on a vendor, as not working for an MCI or UUnet (remember, we’re talking early 1999-2001 here, they are the big guys), at times my voice in the “fix this bug” queue would be a little mouse squeak to their lion’s roar, in spite of heading up a high-profile Internet Exchange.

Eventually, we got proper multi-threaded and modular OS in networking hardware, but I remember asking for “fast, mostly stupid” network hardware a lot back then. No “boiling the sea”, an oft-heard cliché these days.

The other thing I often wished I could do was have hardware vendor A’s forwarding hardware because it rocked, but use vendor B’s routing engine, as vendor A’s was unstable or feature incomplete, or vendor B’s just had a better config language or features I wanted/needed.

So, in theory, OpenFlow could stand to enable network builders to do the sorts of things I describe above – allowing “mix-and-match” of “stuff that does what I want”.

This could stand to threaten the established “classic” vendors who have built their business around hardware/software pairings. So, how do they approach this? Fingers-in-ears “la, la, la, we can’t hear you”? Or embrace it?

You should, in theory, and with the right interface/shim/API/magic in your OpenFlow controller, be able to plug in whatever bits you like to run the control protocols and be the “brains” of your OpenFlow network.

So, using the “I like Vendor A’s hardware, but Vendor B’s foo implementation” example, a lot of people like the feature support and predictability of the routing code from folks such as Cisco and Juniper, but find they have different hardware needs (or a smaller budget), and choose a Brocade box.

Given that so much merchant silicon is going into network gear these days, the software is now the main ingredient in the “secret sauce”, the sort approach that folks such as Arista are taking.

In the case of a Cisco, their “secret sauce” is their industry standard routing engine. Are they enlightened enough to develop a version of their routing engine which can run in an OpenFlow controller environment? I’m not talking about opening the code up, but as a “black box” with appropriate magic wrapped around it to make it work with other folks’ controllers and silicon.

Could unpackaging these crown jewels be key to long term survival?

How I (most likely) saved 10kWh a day at home

FaucetI noticed that my electricity account (paid by a monthly direct debit) was starting to accumulate credit over the course of the year, so I was rather happy when I got news that my monthly payment is to go down by just over £20 a month from April.

Of course, the monthly systems are prone to “swings and roundabouts”, where if your monthly payment is too high you end up with an account massively in credit and your electricity company sat on a load of your money, or the opposite, you’re paying too little each month and end up owing.

So, I did wonder if it had been reduced too much and I’d end up in arrears after a few months…

However, on closer investigation, my home is using less electricity each month compared to the same quarter last year, even accounting for our recent very cold winter. The bill has a graph comparing our average daily energy usage from the current statement against the same period the previous year.

It was around 10kWh a day less this year compared to last!

I wondered how we’d achieved this.

We hadn’t really changed any major appliances, we hadn’t cooked less, been away for weeks, or anything that would produce such a signficant change.

Then it dawned on me that our old immersion heater in the hot water tank (sadly, no gas at home, just electric) failed early last year, and was replaced with a new one. One of the reasons the old one failed was because it had become coated in limescale – London’s water is famously hard and nasty to anything with a heating element. Eventually, the build up causes the element to overheat, and eventually it can split (blowing the fuse, or popping the breaker).

The previously installed heater gave us very hot water. Steaming hot, and needing to be diluted with lots of cold water to be useable. You could hear the sound of boiling coming from the tank when the element was active, and the system was prone to airlocks – partly because of the water being overheated, and partly due to an error in the positioning of the expansion pipe when the property was built.

So, when the heater was replaced, I decided to turn down the thermostat from it’s default setting. Believe it or not, they are usuallyglued to around 65-75 C, with a little blob of silicon sealant. So, I popped the silicon blob off, and turned the stat down to about 55-60 C.

We still get hot enough water, and the only time it’s an issue is having a bath instead of a shower (the shower has it’s own water heater). A bath tends to run all the hot water off, or needs use of the “top-up” heater.

That’s all I can put such a significant and sustained change down to, but it’s looks to save about £20 a month. Talk about money down the drain!

Oh, and the system airlocks less frequently.

Flowery marketing adjectives gone wrong

If you live in the UK, you’ll know the purple phenomena which is Premier Inn, advertised by that jolly Lenny Henry. (He’s a very tall chap. I wonder if they have a special bed for him when he stays?)

They actually do well at providing a reasonably good and consistent hotel product, something which the UK has long been lacking. Remember we’re talking about the country where you could end up in an antique hotel complete with rattly plumbing, school-canteen food, and that epitome of UK hotel kitsch, the Corby Trouser Press.

However, the warm, fuzzy, “I know what I’m getting”, brand consistency which comes with Premier Inn, also comes at a cost: There’s a marketing department back at Premier Inn Central in Dunstable, which feels the need to use lots of adjectives. Fairly standard marketing practice, but it’s almost like it’s there for the sake of it, and often downright odd.

My current cringe-worthy favourite is from their “grab and go” breakfast, or whatever it is they call it. It stood out as being odd when I first saw the flowery prose, talking about grabbing:

“A Costa Coffee and a baked croissant“…

The first thought that came into my mind was “Baked as opposed to what?”

Poached? Steamed? Deep-fat fried? The mind boggles.

Some copywriter in the marketing department just had to put in an adjective.

Yes, it made me pay attention to their “baked croissant”, so maybe it worked, but it’s just bloody weird when you read it.