I’m at Networking Field Day 13 this week. You can imagine how much fun I’m having with my friends! I wanted to drop some quick thoughts on visibility for this week on you all about what we’re hearing and raise some interesting questions.

I Can See Clearly Now

Visibility is a huge issue for companies. Seeing what’s going on is hard for people. Companies like Ixia talk about the need to avoid dropping any packets to make sure we have complete knowledge of the network. But that requires a huge amount of hardware and design. You’re always going to need traditional monitoring even when everything is using telemetry and other data models. Make sure you size things right.

Forward Networks told us that there is an increasing call for finding a way to monitor both the underlay network and the overlay network. Most overlay companies give you a way to tie into their system via API or other telemetry. However, there is no visibility into the underlay because of the event horizon. Likewise, companies like Forward Networks are focusing on the underlay with mapping technologies and modeling software but they can’t pass back through the event horizon to see into the overlay. Whoever ends up finding a way to marry both of these together is going to make a lot of money.

Apstra is taking the track of not caring what the underlay looks like. They’re going to give you the tools to manage it all without hard setup. You can rip and replace switches as needed with multivendor support. That’s a huge win if you run a heterogeneous network or you’re looking to start replacing traditional hardware with white or bright box options. Likewise, their ability to pull configs can help you visualize your device setup more effectively no matter what’s under there.

Tom’s Take

I’ve got some more Networking Field Day thoughts coming soon, but I wanted to get some thoughts out there for you to think about this weekend. Stay tuned for some new ideas coming out of the event!