BUILDING THE INFRASTRUCTURE TO ENABLE THE CHANGING FACE OF IT

MARCH 2015 \ VOL. 6 \ N0. 2

k E D I T O R S D E S K k INFOGRAPHICS

Networking Data Mine

for the Cloud?
Ill Drink to That

k S D N S TA R T E R K I T k IoT

Taking Some of The Internet of

the DIY out of SDN Pings: Real Networks
That Support IoT

CLOUD
NETWORKING
GETS REAL
Cloud adoption is no k T H E S U B N ET
k INFOGRAPHICS

longer a question of if, From Ports to Pulse Check

or even when. The Programming:
real question is: Is your A Networking
network ready for it? Career Evolves
 CLOUD DATA MINE SDN STARTER KITS
EDITORS DESK | JESSICA SCARPATI
Networking for the Cloud? Ill Drink to That
For a long time, I just figured I wasnt a
Got a cloud
beer person.
computing
Beer never really tasted good to me. It
project on tap?
was always too bitter, too carbonated and
Dont forget about
too zingy. My taste buds would read it as a
the network.
combination of grass, grapefruit and the
adhesive backing of postage stamps. But as
the craft beer revival began to sweep across
the United States several years ago, I de-
cided it was time to give this beer thing an-
other shot.
I tried a lot of beers. I hated a lot of beers.
IPAs were the worst, but I was no great fan
of most lagers either. I didnt speak the lan-
guage of beer drinkers, so I went by other
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peoples recommendations. I had no clue
how to articulate what it was that I specifi-
cally liked or disliked. I was ready to just
accept that beer is beer, and I didnt like
any of it.
Then I had my first pint of Guinness,
and the world suddenly made sense.
So what does beer have to do with net-
working? In this case, admittedly, the
connection is oblique and maybe a little
tenuous. Our cover story on cloud network-
ing (Building a Network That Supports the
Cloud) in this issue of Network Evolution
got me thinking about one of the biggest
contradictions in cloud computing. For
 CLOUD DATA MINE SDN STARTER KITS
most clouds to be cost effective and opera-
tionally efficient, they often must deliver
a one-size-fits-all service. Enterprise IT
needs, however, are anything but that.
That is to say, we cant direct you to one
common network architecture for every
cloud deployment. Thats due to the fact
that clouds, like beer, come in so many
styles and flavorssee what I did there?
from public to private to hybrid.
The term cloud computing can mean
anything from infrastructure as a service
to software as a service, and it includes
dozens of other as-a-service models in be-
tween. And as contributor Sean M. Kerner
explores in this issues cover story, the net-
work strategy you develop to support the
cloud must be equally multifaceted.
Also in this issue, we take a look at the re-
cent flurry of software-defined networking
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vendors offering starter kits (Taking Some
of the DIY out of SDN), which aim to make
small SDN deployments or labs more ac-
cessible to enterprises. And dont miss con-
tributor Dina Gerdemans story profiling
three enterprise-grade Internet of Things
(IoT) deployments and the wireless LANs
that bring them to life (The Internet of
Pings: Real Networks That Support IoT).
Finally, be sure to check out this edition
of The Subnet, in which one networking
pro describes her personal and professional
journey from pint-sized computer geek to
Google data center engineer to network
automation guru (From Ports to Program-
ming: A Networking Career Evolves). n
Jessica Scarpati
Networking Media Group
Features and E-zine Editor
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Cloud computing has

Cloud
fundamentally changed the

Building a way enterprises deploy and

use IT resources. How much
Network does the network also have
That Supports to transform?

the Cloud
Building a network that supports
cloud computing appears, for many net-
work engineers, to be a path paved by fat
BY SEAN M. KERNER
pipes. But some enterprise networks need
more than extra bandwidth to deliver what
the cloud promises: operational efficiency,
lower costs and greater agility to deploy,
consume and manage IT resources.
And while there has been no shortage
of hype about cloud computing, it isnt all

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 CLOUD DATA MINE SDN STARTER KITS
just hot air. Public cloud service spend-
ing is projected to hit $127 billion in 2018,
up from $56.6 billion in 2014, according to
IDC. With a compound annual growth rate
of 22.8%, public cloud spending is grow-
ing six times faster than the IT market as a
whole, IDC reports.
Meanwhile, private and hybrid cloud de-
ployments continue to flourish, with 58%
of the 600 IT decision makers re-
cently polled by Current Analysis
saying they used private cloud ar-
Network forecast: chitecture in 2014. The poll found
Cloudy with a
chance of pain 28% had adopted a hybrid cloud
strategy.
Whats your biggest The task of designing, testing, de-
challenge with cloud
networking? ploying and managing cloud-ready
Take our quick poll
networks is a multifaceted effort
that presents several challenges,
but it can also be an opportunity for
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enterprises to optimize their network op-
erations, improve security and lower costs.
Achieving those goals requires more than
the right technology investments. Take it
from those who have been there: People,
process and strategy are just as important
to cloud networking as the actual infra-
structure deployed.
At K&L Gates LLP, a Boston-based global
law firm with more than 2,000 lawyers
spread across five continents, the cloud
isnt just an idea; its an operational shift
that has had a significant impact through-
out the firm. K&L Gates uses both private
and public cloud technologies today.
We manage over two petabytes of data,
and I wanted to be able to take advantage
of cloud architecture, explains Scott M.
Angelo, chief information officer at K&L
Gates.
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Angelo has been at K&L Gates for three been a cry for more capacity in order to
years and he has, in fact, been able to shift move to the cloud.
his organization to benefit from the cloud. Bask Iyer is the CIO of Juniper Networks
But its an effort that wasnt without its and is responsible for the internal network
challengesand it was no small undertak- and applications that Junipers employees
ing either. use every day. As Iyer has transitioned Ju-
So, what had to change at K&L Gates in nipers own network to support public, pri-
order to take advantage of the cloud? vate and hybrid cloud models, hes had to
Everything, Angelo says. try to make sense of what cloud networking
truly requires.
The SaaS [software as a service] vendors
Its Not Just dont want to make cloud sound compli-
About Fat Pipes cated, he says, so they just tell you to put
The SaaS vendors
When enterprises consider a in a fat pipe.
dont want to make cloud
move to the cloudpublic, pri- In reality, however, simply putting in a fat
sound complicated, so
they just tell you to put vate or hybridthe first item on pipethat is, a higher-bandwidth network
in a fat pipe. many networking professionals connectionshould be just one piece of a
Bask Iyer, wish lists is more bandwidth. broader cloud networking strategy. That
Even at companies that live and said, building a network for cloud is not a
CIO, Juniper Networks

breathe networking, there has one-size-fits-all approach either. Network

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requirements for cloud depend on which
model of cloud computing is going to be
used, the way in which cloud-hosted appli-
cations and workloads will be reached, and
the amount of traffic expected between on-
premises systems and the cloud, according
to Jim Frey, vice president of research for
hybrid cloud and infrastructure manage-
ment at Enterprise Management Associ-
ates Inc.
A dedicated WAN link to the cloud af-
fords enterprises more con-
trol over performance and
associated data live entirely in a public or
private cloud.
In this case, there are few specific net-
work requirements beyond the capacity re-
quired to move files back and forth as well
as a means for secure access, Frey says.
Many cloud providers offer VPN services
directly, or a cloud-based router can be de-
ployed as a VPN gateway.
Networking gets a little more complex
with hybrid cloud, which EMAs research
indicates is growing at 40% annually
more than twice as fast as pure public or

76%
of global data center traffic
will come from cloud services
and applications by 2018.
Source: Cisco Global Cloud Index: Forecast and Methodology,
20132018, Cisco, November 2014
security, and security, but
connecting via the Internet
enables cloud applications
and workloads to be acces-
sible from anywhere.In
the simplest cloud deploy-
ments, applications and their
private cloud deployments.In a hybrid
cloud, data resides both in the public cloud
and in a private cloud, which ends up creat-
ing a number of requirements for specific
networking features.
VLANs or overlay networksi.e., VX-
LAN, NVGRE or OTVwill be needed to

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 CLOUD DATA MINE SDN STARTER KITS
segment or isolate traffic both within the
cloud, if available from cloud provider,
and to and from the cloud, Frey suggests.
Quality of service and DSCP traffic priori-
tization may also be necessary to ensure
enough bandwidth is reserved and avail-
able for critical transactions or data flows,
he adds.
Additionally, WAN optimization appli-
ances or application delivery controllers
may be used to compress and acceler-
ate traffic, depending on the application
type.Adoption of virtual appliances for
network security and monitoring are also
an option in deployments where theyre
necessary, practical and cost effective.
The concept of network programma-
bility, via software-defined networking
(SDN) and network functions virtualiza-
tion (NFV), will also play a significant role
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in optimizing enterprise networks for the
cloud.
SDN and NFV are both highly relevant
to cloud networking, although live produc-
tion usage is still in early stages, Frey says.
Cloud Networking:
Look at the Big Picture
Making big architectural shifts is often
easier said than done, however, and the
technical hurdles are often just one half
of the equation. Juniper CIO Iyer says
that, generally speaking, many people in
an enterprise dont pay attention to in-
frastructure until its broken. In the past,
events like Y2K and other big IT trends like
VoIP put a focus on infrastructure. Now
its cloud computing, security threats and
mobility that have renewed emphasis on
 CLOUD DATA MINE SDN STARTER KITS
infrastructure.
We were potholing before, Iyer says.
We were building things where we saw
holes and increasing bandwidth as we
needed it.
The problem with that approach was that
he was spending a lot of time and money on
infrastructure. By fully embracing a why
not cloud? approachcontinually evaluat-
ing the cloud readiness of every service and
applicationIyer has been able
to optimize Junipers internal IT
operations with a dramatic data
By building an infra-
center consolidation project. He
structure that enables the
decommissioned 18 of the com-
move to the cloud, we
ended up shutting down a panys 20 data centers, lowering
lot of our data centers. the total cost of the network.
Bask Iyer, By building an infrastruc-
ture that enables the move to
CIO, Juniper Networks
the cloud, we ended up shutting
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down a lot of our data centers, he says.
You dont need so much gear in so many
data centers.
While theres no shortage of networking-
savvy minds at Juniper, Iyer is still the IT
guy. That means he got no special favors
when it came to figuring out the best path
forward.
People would rather go help customers
than help me with the network, he says.
So I still have to get my architects and do
design for policy, security, et cetera.
The cloud provided an opportunity to
remove the mind-numbing aspects of
networking, he says, which included rou-
tine tasks like IP address management
and other common services that are now
more centrally managed and controlled in a
cloud network.
Jos Fernandez Balseiro, technical officer
 CLOUD DATA MINE SDN STARTER KITS
and project manager at the European
Space Agency (ESA), says that while more
bandwidth was certainly necessary to sup-
port the Paris-based space agencys pri-
vate cloud project, its only one piece of his
cloud networking strategy.
By the time ESA undertook its private
cloud project, it was already in the midst
of upgrading parts of its WAN from a 100
Mbps, Layer 3 MPLS service to a 1 Gbps,
Layer 2 WAN service. Balseiro faced a two-
part challenge. First, the new WAN needed
to allow traffic to flow seamlessly between
all of ESAs main sites and branches; some
branches are in remote locations and do
not have access to a large amount of band-
width, so reusing the existing connections
was mandatory.
Second, Balseiro also needed to design a
business continuity plan for the agencys
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private cloud that could effectively lever-
age, in a robust way, the Layer 2 features of
the new WANwhile also maintaining the
legacy network security infrastructure that
imposes choke points to allow traffic to al-
ways go through.
Many organizations today do not really
know whether they need business continu-
ity at all and, if yes, whether this need could
be addressed in ways that have a contained
impact on the network, he says.
Dont Forget About People
In addition to infrastructure needs, a suc-
cessful cloud networking strategy also con-
siders the people that need to be part of the
network transformation. Such a shift typi-
cally requires a networking team that has
the technical know-how to navigate cloud
 CLOUD DATA MINE SDN STARTER KITS
computing and virtualization, and one that
is willing to work closely with other groups
within IT to coordinate a broader strategy.
For Angelo, at K&L Gates, a lot of his
companys journey to the cloud didnt have
to do with the pure technology aspects.
Angelo faced a talent management chal-
lengegetting the right mix of people, part-
nerships and vendors to come up with the
best solution.
Also outside the world of switches and
routers, IT pros dabbling in cloud for the
first time often run into problems with leg-
acy service provider and vendor contracts.
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I had existing contracts with data cen-
ters that were major constraints for me get-
ting to where I wanted and needed to be,
Angelo says. There were also contracts
with some of the older technology that we
knew we wanted to get off of.
The question of capital depreciation for
technology assets is another consideration
and challenge that needs to be part of a
cloud network transformation.
All the stars need to align so you can
get things to happen, or you have to work
really hard to make things happen, Angelo
says. n
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Data Mine
k What are you doing with your k The dirty dozen of network security
wireless LAN this year? These 12 misguidedalbeit frighteningly commonpractices are
guaranteed to reduce network availability, increase expenditure
Respondents could select more than one answer. or risks, and alienate end users, according to Gartner.

Shiny-new-object syndrome (unnecessary

40%
38% spending on latest-and-greatest products)
33%
30% Culture of no (denying all requests to maintain lockdown)
24%
20% Insufficient focus on users and business requirements
15%
10%
Defense with inadequate depth
(inadequate defense-in-depth strategy)
0
Organizational misalignment
Expanding Upgrading Integrating None
it it cellular of these Suboptimal branch architecture
and Wi-Fi

Source: 2015 IT Priorities Survey, TechTarget, January 2015, N=934

Security blind spots
Uncoordinated policy management

$4 MILLION
Noncompetitive vendor selections
Hazardous network segmentation
Inadequate end-user education
The average annual cost of application, network and server downtime
from outages and degradations for a North American enterprise.
Inadequate security event management
Source: The Cost of Server, Application, and Network Downtime, Infonetics Research/IHS,
January 2015, N=205 medium and large businesses Source: Avoid These Dirty Dozen Network Security Worst Practices, Gartner, January 2015

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Want to get into software-

SDN Starter Kits
defined networking but dont

Taking Some know where to begin? So-called

starter kits can eliminate some
of the DIY of the do-it-yourself aspects

out of SDN of SDN and ease you into a

new deployment.

Sometimes youd rather order la

carte. You want to download one song, not
BY JESSICA SCARPATI
the whole album. You only need one light
bulb, not a pack of four. You want to eat one
piece of chocolate, not a whole box. Choices
like these usually come at a premium, but
you get exactly what you want.
Other times, however, you may not be
sure what items you need, how many are

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required or how they fit together.
Most network engineers interested in
software-defined networking (SDN) but
not yet SDN savants find themselves in the
latter category. Theyre excited about the
prospect of network programmability, but
very few have the exper-
tise, staff or budget to suc-
cessfully design, test and
Enterprises still launch a full-scale SDN
slow to deploy SDN
Do you have any form of software- deployment.
defined networking (SDN) deployed
SDN is a passion of
Its mostly due to the budget. None of my
switches are OpenFlow-capable, so if youre
talking about SDN from an OpenFlow per-
spective, it would basically take a rip and
replace.
Concerns like Paxsons havent gone un-
noticed by vendors, and they are respond-
ing with kind of a prix-fixe alternative to
the do-it-yourself model of SDNa bun-
dle-discount, no-assembly-required pack-
age of products known as an SDN starter
kit. Pica8 was the first to launch one in De-

30+70+s
in your LAN, WAN and/or data center?
mine, but I dont see my cember 2013, which led to an avalanche of
employer getting into similar announcements last year from Big
30%
Yes
that area anytime soon, Switch Networks, Cisco, Dell, NEC, Plexxi
70% says Aaron Paxson, global and Tallac Networks.
No
network manager at SVP The kits range significantly in terms of
Worldwide, a sewing cost, size and the variety of deployment op-
Source: Software-defined networking survey, TechTarget, January 2015, machine manufacturer tions, depending on what theyll be used
N=744
based in LaVergne, Tenn. for. In general, however, they consist of a

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 CLOUD DATA MINE SDN STARTER KITS
small number of switches and SDN control-
lers with pre-integrated software, a short-
term software license and a professional
support contract.
The goal is straightforward: Convince
enterprises they dont need to be Google
or Facebook to afford and find a use for
SDN.
There are some enterprises that look
at their networks and say, We do need to
change, but we want to limit how fast we
change and how much we change, says
Brad Casemore, a research director at IDC.
Cost is definitely a major consideration,
but I also think its about making [SDN] less
frightening, Casemore adds. One way to
do that is to let people play with the tech-
nology and begin to find out what they can
do with it. They see fewer risks and more
opportunities.
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Removing the
Guesswork From SDN
Christian Sarrasin is the founder and CEO
of Clean Safe Cloud, a cloud provider in
Switzerland, although the company hasnt
yet gone to market with its service. Sarrasin
and his chief technology officer (CTO) are
in the process of designing and building a
data center network based on SDN for their
cloud offeringhoused in a nuclear-blast-
proof, ex-Swiss Army bunker.
When they began evaluating the various
approaches to SDN, the two entrepreneurs
were initially interested in white-box
switching, particularly switches that ran
on Linux-based networking software from
Cumulus Networks. The cost savings inher-
ent in the model were attractive, and Sarra-
sin says he liked any approach that would
keep the threat of vendor lock-in at bay.
 CLOUD DATA MINE SDN STARTER KITS PULSE CHECK IoT THE SUBNET

But they also considered Big Switch, with support perspective.

a particular interest in how the vendor Clean Safe Cloud is using Big Switchs
bridged physical and virtual switching. Big higher-end starter kit, which has a list price
Switch ultimately won the dealnot only of $99,000 and is designed for a production
due to its architecture but also because environment, not a lab. The kit comes with
the vendors starter kit, which Clean Safe four leaf and two spine bare-metal switches
Cloud is using to build its network, takes from Edge-Core Networks, redundant
the guesswork out of what Sarrasin and his controllers, a three-year Big Cloud Fabric
team need in order to implement SDN. software license, three years of hardware/
Yes, we could do it our- software support and 40 Gigabit Ethernet
selves [with white-box leaf-spine cables. The setup comprises two
switches], but we dont re- racks of gear, which translate into support
Yes, we could do it ourselves
ally want to run that risk, for about 2,000 virtual machines on mod-
[with white-box switches], and we dont think that ern servers, according to Prashant Gan-
but we dont really want would be money wisely dhi, Big Switchs vice president of product
to run that risk, and we dont placed, Sarrasin says. management.
think that would be money Were going to have pretty Big Switch also sells a single-rack,
wisely placed.
stringent SLAs, and we $39,000 starter kit geared more toward lab
Christian Sarrasin, CEO, Clean Safe Cloud
need to have a good vendor environments; that kit has less redundancy,
standing behind us from a and it has a one-year support contract and

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software license, Gandhi says. The licenses At the other end is Ciscos collection of four
included in either kit have no limitations in Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI)
terms of features, according to Big Switch, starter kits, announced last July, which
and all of the gear is modular, meaning it range from $250,000 to $350,000 and con-
could be used in or re- sist of various packages of Nexus switches,
purposed for a larger ACI software licenses, Application Policy
deployment. Infrastructure Controller (APIC) clusters
Top uses for SDN
To say that no two SDN and 40-gigabit optical cables.
Which SDN services do enterprises
consider most important? starter kits are the same Darien Hirotsu is an SDN consultant at
Network virtualization
would be an understate- SDN Essentials in Newark, Del., which pro-
% 77 ment. At the low end is vides SDN-related training, consulting and
Network monitoring/
management NECs $3,000 Program- managed services. He uses Pica8s Open-
64
mableFlow Starter Pack, Flow-based Open SDN starter kit for the
%

Network
orchestration announced last October, companys internal lab as well as for train-
49
%

Load balancing and

which provides licensing ing sessions with clients. The kit, listed at
dynamic security (tied)
%47
for up to five switches on $8,895 and intended for lab environments,
Application its ProgrammableFlow contains only softwarespecifically, a CD-
optimization
%34 controllers and is targeted ROM loaded with Ryu, an open source SDN
Source: Software-defined networking survey, TechTarget, January 2015, to lab environments and controller, plus an OpenFlow-based net-
N=150
small-scale deployments. work tap application and Wireshark. The

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kit also requires the separate purchase of white-box switching, you can do that as
a Pica8 white-box switch, which runs the well.
vendors PicOS software.
The value of starter kits like Pica8s is
their ability to let network engineers get Cracking the Enterprise
hands-on experience with SDN technology SDN Market
in a preconfigured, pre-tested platform, Hi- For enterprises looking to make a gradual
rotsu says. transition to SDN, starter kits can help lay
For us, whats appealing about the Pica8 the groundwork, says IDCs Casemore.
SDN starter kit, in particu- Workloads are shifting to greater virtu-
lar, is its a little bit of every- alizationmaybe even to containers over
thingmeaning if you want timeso youre looking at how you need to
Workloads are shifting to dive into some Python automate your network, build a flatter to-
to greater virtualization, so code and understand how pology and make it programmable, he says.
youre looking at how you need the guts of Ryu work, you You realize youve got to make changes
to automate your network,
have the option to do that, to your network, but you realize you cant
build a flatter topology and
he says. On the flip side, if make them overnight. Many organizations
make it programmable.
youre more of a networking- are looking at [how they can begin] spin-
Brad Casemore,
research director at IDC centric person and want to ning up new workloads on this new in-
learn OpenFlow and touch frastructure, so a starter kit can provide a

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 CLOUD DATA MINE SDN STARTER KITS
foundation for that.
Paxson, the global network manager at
SVP Worldwide, acknowledges that most
SDN products still have big hurdles to over-
comeprimarily, the questionable level of
support for multi-vendor networks. But
by lowering other barriers to entry, such
as cost and complexity, starter kits may be
just what SDN needs to get a foothold in the
enterprise, he adds.
You have an industry that hasnt
changed in a very, very long time. Maybe
the only things that changed are the pro-
tocols, management and some speeds, but
SDN changes all of that. So you really have
to have something thats put together and
proven to work, Paxson says. I think [the
starter kit] is a great business model to get
SDN into an industry that hasnt changed
for 30 years.
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Starter Kits, Not Learning Kits
For networking pros just looking to toy
around with SDN, however, starter kits are
far from the most economical option. Even
the cheapest kits cost thousands of dol-
lars, and they are aimed at enterprises tak-
ing their first real steps into SDN. In other
words, most starter kits are too expensive
to be learning kits.
Free emulators like Mininet allow
network engineers to experiment with
OpenFlow networks on a virtual machine
without the need for any switches or con-
troller hardware. Some vendors like Big
Switch provide free loaner gear to prospec-
tive customers for a few months. Other
vendors, including Pica8 and Brocade, are
offering free, scaled-down versions of their
operating systems for testing on bare-metal
switches.
 CLOUD DATA MINE SDN STARTER KITS
Ive done the vast majority of my Open-
Flow and SDN testing in pure virtual labs
because, frankly, its very easy to set up a
Mininet lab and play with OpenFlow and
OpenFlow controllers. And thats really all
you need to understand the basics and core
concepts of SDN, says Brandon Mangold, a
principal architect at United Airlines work-
ing on developing a next-generation data
center architecture based on
SDN.
Mangold is in the process
Starter kits are valuable of testing products from Nu-
for people who dont want age Networks, Ciscos ACI
to DIY, but at this stage, product suite and VMwares
even if you buy one of these
NSX platform. He is not us-
starter kits, youre still doing
ing any commercial starter
a lot of do-it-yourself.
kits, and he is skeptical of
Brandon Mangold,
principal architect, United Airlines their worth.
The starter kits are valu-
2 0 N E T W O R K E V O L U T I O N, M A R C H 2 0 1 5
PULSE CHECK IoT THE SUBNET
able for people who dont want to DIY, but
at this stage, even if you buy one of these
starter kits, youre still doing a lot of do-it-
yourself, Mangold says. I think the value
in these starter kits is more for the vendors
and them trying to get customers sold on
their solutions.
SDN Essentials Hirotsu also acknowl-
edges that while starter kits eliminate the
need to start from scratch, they are far from
foolproof and still require specific skills
and a familiarity with SDN.
Any starter kit involves an investment in
time and in growing your expertise. For ex-
ample, if youre a network engineer and you
havent had to touch a lot of open source
software, you may not be familiar with how
to update the open source code, Hirotsu
says. I think its a good place to start [if
you have] the full range of skills that are
 CLOUD DATA MINE SDN STARTER KITS PULSE CHECK IoT THE SUBNET

involved. But if you want to be an SDN en-

gineer, one of the things that needs to hap-
pen is you need to acquire skills that take
Starter kits hint at vendor strengths
you out of your comfort zone.
SDN STARTER KITS come in all shapes and sizes, ranging in cost from a As with any technology, Uniteds Man-
couple thousand to over a quarter-million dollars. But thats not the only gold contends, some of the most important
factor that separates them from each other.
lessons are revealed during traditional
Several starter kits are marketed for specific use cases:
vendor bake-offs. The limitations Man-
n Big Switch Networks pitches its two starter kits gold says he encountered in the SDN prod-
as the foundation for building private clouds.
ucts hes testing are too vendor-specific to
n Pica8s starter kit focuses on a network tap application.
uncover in an emulation tool, and theyre
significant enough that he wouldnt find
n Plexxi offers three distinct starter kits for agile data centers, it acceptable to discover them after mak-
distributed clouds and big data analytics.
ing an investment in the actual equipment,
You can learn a lot about where [these vendors] expect or hope to
whether it comes in a starter kit or tradi-
make inroads, says Brad Casemore, a research director at IDC. They tional purchase.
definitely see that they have a value proposition for those use cases, Although a nondisclosure agreement
and theyre putting together really bite-sized ways of adopting the
prohibits him from getting too specific,
technology. n
Mangold says his biggest concerns with
software-centric platforms like NSX and

2 1 N E T W O R K E V O L U T I O N, M A R C H 2 0 1 5
 CLOUD DATA MINE SDN STARTER KITS
Nuage are that they dont work best in
anything but a single-hypervisor, fully vir-
tualized data center, and he has found sig-
nificant scale issues. As for ACI, he has
found Ciscos rapid-fire software updates
for the various products arent keeping
up with each other, making it difficult to
achieve feature alignment across the whole
ACI suite.
We are disappointed with all of the so-
lutions. Reality doesnt meet the market-
ing hype, Mangold says. Frankly, for any
modern organizationenterprise, specifi-
callywith a mix of requirements, none of
the solutions that were looking at are quite
where theyre supposed to be. But we kind
of expected that. Were still early in the
testing phases to validate what direction we
2 2 N E T W O R K E V O L U T I O N, M A R C H 2 0 1 5
PULSE CHECK IoT THE SUBNET
want to focus on, and we kind of knew all of
the solutions were still going to be a work in
progress.
Starter kits dont have all the answers,
acknowledges IDCs Casemore, who em-
phasizes that the success of any SDN de-
ployment depends on current and future
technology needs, as well as the level of ex-
pertise among IT staff.
This is potentially one step in a much
longer journey, Casemore says.
Enterprises need to look at various
starter kit options and figure out which is
appropriate for the sorts of workloads they
want to run and intend to runin other
words, what theyve got now and what they
plan to deployand evaluate them within
that prism, he adds. n
 CLOUD DATA MINE SDN STARTER KITS PULSE CHECK IoT THE SUBNET

Pulse Check
k Hold the phone: Whos your k What happens when WAN
primary telephony vendor? performance goes south?
Respondents could select multiple answers.

44%
Cisco CIO gets pressure from
bosses or other managers 44%
23%
Avaya
It tarnishes the reputation
of the IT department 43%
14%
Microsoft
The company loses revenue 38%

The company may not meet

2% regulatory requirements 14%
4%
Mitel Networks The company loses
Panasonic customers 13%
NEC Toshiba
Samsung
Siemens 1% The company receives
7%
negative publicity
ShoreTel
Source: 2014 Wide Area Networking State-of-the-Market Report, Ashton Metzler
Source: 2014 IT Decision Maker UC Survey Report, Wainhouse Research, April 2014, N=153 & Associates, April 2014, N=200+ IT pros

51% of businesses will increase their budget this year for network performance technologies.
Source: Visibility, Automation and Analysis: A Winning Combo for Reliable Networks, Aberdeen Group, November 2014

2 3 N E T W O R K E V O L U T I O N, M A R C H 2 0 1 5
 CLOUD DATA MINE SDN STARTER KITS PULSE CHECK IoT THE SUBNET

Enough already with the

IoT
proverbial smart refrigerator

The Internet that orders more milk when

youre out. Here are three
of Pings: Real enterprise-grade deployments

Networks That of the Internet of Things and

a look at the networks that
Support IoT make it all happen.

In the early 1980s, a Coke machine at

BY DINA GERDEMAN
Carnegie Mellon University was connected
to the Internet. It reported on its inventory
and provided information about whether
newly loaded drinks were ice cold.
This was the beginning, as the legend
goes, of what would become known as the
Internet of Things (IoT).

2 4 N E T W O R K E V O L U T I O N, M A R C H 2 0 1 5
 CLOUD DATA MINE SDN STARTER KITS
Today, IoT technologyphysical objects
with network connectivity for sending and
receiving datahas become a powerful
force in a variety of organizations, includ-
ing cities, school districts and businesses.
In November, Gartner forecast that 4.9
billion connected things would be in use
in 2015, up 30% from 2014. That number is
likely to reach 25 billion by 2020, Gartner
says.
Three organizations that have embraced
IoTthe Las Vegas Sands, the city of San
Jose and Texas beer distributor Del Papa
discuss their strategies and pull the curtain
back on the networking technologies that
enable them.
IoT: A Sure Bet for Las Vegas Sands
The Las Vegas Sands has two primary types
2 5 N E T W O R K E V O L U T I O N, M A R C H 2 0 1 5
PULSE CHECK IoT THE SUBNET
of customers at its hotels and expo center.
There are the families who dont want a va-
cation to disrupt all the alerts and messages
theyd normally get on their connected
smartwatches, fitness devices, smart-
phones, tablets and laptops. And then there
are the groups that bring in large events re-
quiring wireless connectivity for hundreds
or even thousands of devices.
But in addition to serving its customers
personal connectivity needs, the Sands
network also facilitates many of its internal
operations using IoT technology, allow-
ing staff to remotely adjust the tempera-
ture of hotel rooms and large exhibit halls,
lock doors, change lighting, manage freezer
temperatures and monitor pool chemical
levels.
The Sands network is equipped to theo-
retically handle up to 800,000 devices, and
 CLOUD DATA MINE SDN STARTER KITS PULSE CHECK IoT THE SUBNET

it has carried connectivity for as many as
34,000 at one time, says Justin Herrman,
executive director of information technol-
How do you think IoT
will affect security?
17% of networking
professionals believe the
Internet of Things (IoT) will
be a security disaster
49% believe IoT will have the
same level of security problems
we have today with other apps
and systems
21% believe IoT will provide
an opportunity to improve
security
Source: Securing the Internet of Thing Survey, the SANS
Institute, January 2014, N=391; 13% chose other.
ogy at the Sands.
The company tapped
Xirrus for its network-
ing needs, working with
the vendor to build robust
wired and wireless net-
works, backed up by qual-
ity of service to ensure
performance. Traffic from
IoT devices rides over the
same infrastructure as
standard wireless traffic,
which means that in order
to accommodate an in-
creasing number of devices
and growing data demands,
Herrman needed to design
his Wi-Fi network for high density and
ensure his LAN and WAN have sufficient
bandwidth.
The events are extremely high mainte-
nance. One event can bring millions
[of people] in two days, Herrman says.
We cant afford to lose [connectivity].
The Sands Wi-Fi network includes 270
of Xirrus high-density arrays, and each of
those units can provide connectivity for
thousands of wireless devices at a time. The
arrays flow back to a 10 Gbps wired LAN
connection, and eventually out to a 6 Gbps
WAN link, which consists of five 1 Gbps
Metro Ethernet connections provided
by multiple carriers for redundancy. The
Sands also uses load-balancing devices to
share all six lines simultaneously and pre-
vent downtime.
The benefit of installing 270 devices

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 CLOUD DATA MINE SDN STARTER KITS
versus 1,200 is that it was only a fraction
of the install, and the ongoing support
will always be less. Its been outstanding,
Herrman says. You manage them all inde-
pendently in the cloud, and you can man-
age them simultaneously.
The Sands tested a project recently that
used guests flight and auto registration in-
formation to automatically send a welcome
message when they arrived at the airport or
by car and were within city limits. The bell-
man would know when to expect the cus-
tomer, and a key to the hotel room door was
provided on a mobile device with an app, so
the guest didnt have to go to the front desk
to check in.
When we ran the demo, quite a few peo-
ple opted into it, Herrman says. Were
looking to get the capital and make this
a reality next year. There are huge gears
2 7 N E T W O R K E V O L U T I O N, M A R C H 2 0 1 5
PULSE CHECK IoT THE SUBNET
moving for IoT accommodations in the
near future.
The hotel is hoping to take IoT a step fur-
ther and perhaps get to the point of recog-
nizing a customers preferences, making
sure a special drink and certain cigar a cli-
ent enjoyed at a sister property in Asia is
also available in the customers Las Vegas
room upon arrival.
People want the future now. When they
walk onto a property, they want the prop-
erty to recognize them, Herrman says.
And were trying to get there. We want the
property to breathe with them at a micro
level.
As San Jose Grows,
Wi-Fi Steps Up to Support IoT
The city of San Jose is expecting its
 CLOUD DATA MINE SDN STARTER KITS PULSE CHECK IoT THE SUBNET

population to balloon from its current 1

million residents to 1.4 milliona 40% in-
Cities that greenlight IoT projects creaseby 2040. Last summer, the north-
to reduce traffic, pollution
ern California city partnered with Intel to
Smart cities that combine sensor networks with traffic management and
parking technologies will significantly reduce congestion on the roads over run a six-month pilot program to install a
the next four years, according to a recent study. But less time in traffic isnt
the only thing that will make residents of those cities breathe easy.
network of sensors around the city to col-
lect data on everything from traffic flow to
IoT air pollution.
technology
is expected to The city placed the sensors in strategic
cumulatively reduce
carbon dioxide spots throughout its 180 square miles, in-
emissions by
164 million metric tons
around the world
cluding an area in south San Jose where
through 2019.
two freeways intersect and a large mall and
Thats
equivalent to the
high school stand; a downtown site near a
annual emissions
produced by light rail, commuter train and bus system;
an area in east San Jose near a small munic-
35 million
vehicles.

ipal airport and mall; and in the northern

end of the city near some wetlands.
The city intends to use the data it collects
Source: Smart Cities: Strategies, Energy, Emissions and Cost Savings 2014-2019, Juniper Research, January 2015 to make decisions about planning mass
transit systems and roadwaysas well as

2 8 N E T W O R K E V O L U T I O N, M A R C H 2 0 1 5
 CLOUD DATA MINE SDN STARTER KITS
commercial and residential buildingsto
accommodate the expected population
growth, says Vijay Sammeta, San Joses
CIO.
We didnt walk into this with any pre-
conceived notions, Sammeta says. Were
letting these data sets tell a story about
whats going on in our community. The ulti-
mate goal is to take transit data, air quality
data, how full parking lots are and any other
data we collect to understand the data.
From there, the city will decide what con-
versations we can have about urban design
and traffic patterns, and then we can take
some action.
The infrastructure requires two critical
components: power for the sensor and the
ability to get the data from the sensor to
the cloud. The city connected the sensors
to streetlights, and depending on which
2 9 N E T W O R K E V O L U T I O N, M A R C H 2 0 1 5
PULSE CHECK IoT THE SUBNET
streetlights they used, some used a wired
connection, some used the citys wireless
LAN and others used cellular connectiv-
ity. The city pulled some sensors down to
switch them around as they got a feel for
which type of connectivity worked best.
Pulling cable took longer than tapping
into Wi-Fi or using cellular service, so the
city found the wireless and cellular connec-
tions easier to deploy.
As long as were doing this project, we
wanted to learn a little bit about what
would be successful, says Sammeta.
There are a variety of different models to
deploy, and we wanted to test all three.
On its wireless access points (APs) from
Ruckus Wireless, the city deployed a sepa-
rate wireless network specifically for the
IoT data, allowing San Joses IT team to
have tight control over security. Intel
 CLOUD DATA MINE SDN STARTER KITS
houses a Hadoop cluster in the cloud that
all the data flows into, and all the micro-
transactions get aggregated there for data
analysis.
Its important for cities to look at this
type of technology so they can continue to
provide meaningful data to elected officials
to make more informed decisions, Sam-
meta says. It involves looking at IoT op-
portunities that will shape those decisions.
Smart Networks Brew Big
Savings for Del Papa Distributing
Del Papaa Texas-based beer, water and
energy-drink distributorbegan integrat-
ing Ciscos IoT technology into its new
Texas City facility in the spring of 2012. The
company was simply hoping to reduce en-
ergy costs, but it found that IoT technology
3 0 N E T W O R K E V O L U T I O N, M A R C H 2 0 1 5
PULSE CHECK IoT THE SUBNET
also came with a nice bonus: It helps work-
ers fill orders and get them out the door
more quickly.
The company can now monitor and make
real-time remote changes to the heating,
ventilation and air-conditioning system.
Keeping an eye on the thermostat is impor-
tant, since Del Papa has an agreement with
Anheuser-Busch to keep the warehouse at a
certain temperature to protect the beer.
Similarly, the company can remotely
control lighting in its buildings. Many of
the lights are automated, with office lights
turning on at 8 a.m. and turning off at 5 p.m.
The warehouse has motion-sensor lights
that turn off if no activity is detected within
15 minutes. This provides an additional se-
curity bonus; if the system shows that the
lights in the back of the warehouse turned
on in the middle of the night, the company
 CLOUD DATA MINE SDN STARTER KITS PULSE CHECK IoT THE SUBNET

can look into whether it was because an led to big, albeit unintended, productiv-
intruder entered the building. And if the ity gains. The companys previous wire-
lights are accidentally left on at the end of less infrastructure was unreliable, and if
the night, they can be remotely shut down. an employee stood in a certain section of
We had to sell the efficiencies to the the warehouse, the worker might lose a sig-
board members, says Steve Holtsclaw, in- nal and lose access to the details of an in-
formation systems manager at Del Papa coming order on a wireless device. So the
Distributing. There is this up-front cost, employee may then have had to move to a
but when you look at the kilowatt usage different section of the warehouse to see
now versus what we could be the order before pulling the products. Now
using, were seeing an incred- the warehouse is saturated with strong,
ible savings. We can also set consistent wireless coverage to remove
We can also set targets targets and decide we only those dead zones.
and decide we only want want to use this much watt- Filling orders is what sells beer and
to use this much wattage age every month or every makes money, Holtsclaw says. You
every month or every year,
year, and we can control it so wouldnt think it was time consuming, but
and we can control it so that
we will hit those targets.
that we will hit those targets the old system turned an eight-hour day
Steve Holtsclaw, information
or come under them. into a 10-hour day in terms of overtime
systems manager, Del Papa Distributing The network supporting costs, delays in verifying orders and loading
the IoT technology has also trucks. We dont have that issue anymore.

3 1 N E T W O R K E V O L U T I O N, M A R C H 2 0 1 5
 CLOUD DATA MINE SDN STARTER KITS
Holtsclaw and his team had to gut most of
their legacy network and start from scratch
with the IoT infrastructure.
We had a mismatched hodgepodge of
vendors and equipment that didnt work
well with each other, Holtsclaw says. It
was all out of date and not up to par with
what we needed to do.
Del Papas network runs on Ciscos Cata-
lyst 3850 series and 3750-X series switches
in its access and distribution
layers, Nexus 7000 series
20%
switches in its core, Aironet
3602i APs for its WLAN and
Ciscos 5508 wireless control-
of identity and access manage- ler. It also uses the vendors
ment implementations made
through 2016 will be driven by
Integrated Services Rout-
the Internet of Things. ers, along with a fiber optic
backbone into the facilities
Source: Predicts 2015: Identity and Access Management,
Gartner, December 2014
with connecting intermediate
3 2 N E T W O R K E V O L U T I O N, M A R C H 2 0 1 5
PULSE CHECK IoT THE SUBNET
distribution frames inside each build-
ing. Holtsclaw wanted to make sure all the
switch ports were capable of going up to 10
Gbps to accommodate future needs.
Not only did I buy this equipment to uti-
lize it with what we have, but we are also
thinking in terms of the future, he says.
Everything is at a minimum now, but it
is capable of being upgraded with an easy
switch-over.
The sensors use a mix of wireless and
wired connectivity, and they all commu-
nicate via the IP on the network. Those
sensors or nodes on my network have an
active heartbeat back to the server and the
application used to manage those devices,
Holtsclaw says. That active connection al-
lows for the real-time management of each
device and provides an accurate read on the
status and settings of the devices.
 CLOUD DATA MINE SDN STARTER KITS
The company encountered a few
hiccups after installing the technology
although not in terms of the technology
itself functioning as it should, but rather
in training non-IT employees how to
use it properly.
Many of our people dont normally deal
with technology, so it took a lot of effort to
make sure people were trained, he says.
For the first couple of months, there were
times when the gates werent opening be-
cause warehouse personnel were getting
3 3 N E T W O R K E V O L U T I O N, M A R C H 2 0 1 5
PULSE CHECK IoT THE SUBNET
familiar with the software, so my team
had to get involved sometimes.
Stephen Lurie, vice president of IoT
solutions at Zones, the Cisco partner
that helped set up Del Papas network,
says IoT is bound to grow as businesses
find new ways of using data to pinpoint
inefficiencies.
All of these sensors, they have a voice,
Lurie says. They speak a language. And
now, with the adoption of IoT, that voice
can be heard. n
 CLOUD DATA MINE SDN STARTER KITS PULSE CHECK IoT THE SUBNET

THE SUBNET | Q&A | JESSICA SCARPATI

From Ports to Programming:

A Networking Career Evolves

n Leslie Carr
Leslie Carr has managed networks for
n M
 ember
of Customer some of the biggest names on the Web. She
Experience
n C
 umulus Networks
used to be a senior network operations en-
n San Francisco, Calif. gineer at the Wikimedia Foundation, and
before that, she was a network engineer at
Twitter, Craigslist and Google.
These days, Carr, who chats with us
for this edition of The Subnet, is a self-
described automation guru at Cumu-
lus Networks, a Silicon Valley technology
company that develops Linux-based net-
working software for bare-metal switches.
Carr spends her days elbow-deep in batch
scripts and programming languages like
Ansible, Python and Puppet, coming up
with ways to automate configuration
changes in Linux-based switches, just as
sys admins have been able to do with serv-
ers for years.
What are you working on lately?
Im doing all these demonstrationsits
demonstration crazinessfor our big 2.5
release. Were putting in new features, so
Ive been testing the features in a more
real-world environment. Ive got a lab with
three racks of switches, so I get to play with
all those, which makes me super happy. Ive

3 4 N E T W O R K E V O L U T I O N, M A R C H 2 0 1 5
 CLOUD DATA MINE SDN STARTER KITS PULSE CHECK IoT THE SUBNET

been doing a lot of testing and a lot of au- over again. I always think the best sysad-
tomation for demos to show off all the new min is a lazy sysadmin because its like, I
features. dont want to have to keep doing this over
and over. Hey, if I use batch scripting, I can
How did you make that transition from spend twice as long doing it once and then
being a pure network engineer to one five minutes doing it every other time.
that dabbles heavily in programming? Wikimedia is where I really got into it,
When I started in IT, I did a lot of tech sup- and what really helped was having a very
port for little companies, so I think Im supportive team. My co-workers were al-
lucky in that I had some exposure to the ways really happy to help and review my
languages. It happened sociallyjust look- code, which was really awful at first and be-
ing over peoples shoulders came less awful as time went on. Theyd cri-
and asking, Hey, what are tique in a nice way. It can be hard to find a
you doing? Oh, cool, let me great group of co-workers who have no ego
If I use batch scripting, I can see that. And then when I because some people will just say, Oh, I
spend twice as long doing it started at Google, I started in can do this better, instead of actually help-
once and then five minutes the data centers, and thats ing. But they said, Hey, I see why youre
doing it every other time. where I learned batch script- doing it this way, but if you do it this other
Leslie Carr, Cumulus Networks
ing because there were a lot way, its way better.
of processes wed do over and And also being able to Google questions

3 5 N E T W O R K E V O L U T I O N, M A R C H 2 0 1 5
 CLOUD DATA MINE SDN STARTER KITS
on the Internet. I mean, seriously! Without
Stack Overflow, I dont think Id get half of
my work done.
Youve worked on networks for some
of the largest Internet companies.
What was that like?
When I started at Google in the data cen-
ters, we were replacing our core switches,
so they had the vendor come out and give
us this three-hour talk about how every-
thing worked inside, and I thought, Wow,
this is amazing. I think they had ten 24-
port Gig-E blades, which back in 2004 was
incredible. It was like, Whos going to use
all that bandwidth?! Just the way all the
traffic flowed in between the chips was so
mind-blowing. Then, not long after, we
upgraded our entire network to 10 gig, and
then we thought, Were doing this, so now
3 6 N E T W O R K E V O L U T I O N, M A R C H 2 0 1 5
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theyve got plenty of breathing room.
Then video started to become popular,
and this was before [Google] bought You-
Tube. I still remember when we finally got
100 gigs at the edge, which we thought was
amazing and huge at the time and which is
still pretty huge for a lot of companies.
We got little weights that were actually
100 grams [to represent 100 Gigabit Eth-
ernet] and painted them gold because we
were thinking, This is amazing, and itll
take us so long to get beyond this.
Four months later, we got 250 gigs at the
edge. Then about three months after that,
we got 500 gigs at the edge, and they were
saying, All right, this is the last one. How
video took off was insane. We thought, Fi-
nally, the growth is going to slow down. Of
course, it turned out that it grew exponen-
tially, and now, Google doesnt even think
 CLOUD DATA MINE SDN STARTER KITS
in terms of gigabits anymore.
Then I went to Craigslist, which is very
popular but is very text-heavy and very
small-image-heavyno videoso having to
rescale my prefixes from terabits down to
gigabits was a huge leap.
How did you get into IT and,
specifically, networking?
My mom loves to tell this story: I was in
preschool, and our preschool got an Apple
II. It was new and shiny, and I got sent to
time-out every other day because after
I started playing with it, I didnt want to
stop. I would push the other kids off the
chair, and then I would lie and tell my mom
I didnt get to use the computer at all. The
teacher would tell her, Actually, she was
sent to time-out because she did not want
to share.
3 7 N E T W O R K E V O L U T I O N, M A R C H 2 0 1 5
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Then in high school, I was always good
at science and math, and people would say,
You should become an engineer! I liked
chemistry, so I went to college to become a
chemical engineer.
I didnt have a computer in college, so
I had to use the computer labs. I know I
sound like an old ladyIm sure young
people today all have laptops, but back in
the 90s, we had to share computers in a
lab. The Windows and Mac computer labs
always had long lines, but there also was
this Linux computer lab and not only was
it always empty, but the monitors were one
inch bigger. So I was thinking, Id better
learn how to use this Linux thing if I want
to be able to get into the computer lab. I
just sat down and was very confused and
started asking people around me, looking
over their shoulder and seeing what they
 CLOUD DATA MINE SDN STARTER KITS
were doing. I finally learned enough so I
could explore on my own. And, honestly,
since it wasnt my computer, I didnt have a
fear of breaking it because I could just go sit
at the next one.
While I was in college, I changed majors
a lot and found out that chemical engineer-
ing was the least-exciting parts of chemis-
try for me. But I also needed a job, so I had
several awful retail jobs. One of my friends
needed tech support for a Web hosting/
ISP company his friend was starting to
broaden, so I was thinking, OK, I think I
can do that. I got to say a lot of times, Are
you sure your computers plugged in? Are
you sure the modems plugged in?
But that really got me started in IT, so I
started doing lots of odd jobs. I built com-
puters for six-packs of beer and things like
that.
3 8 N E T W O R K E V O L U T I O N, M A R C H 2 0 1 5
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Then I had gotten laid off from my job
in Pittsburgh during the economic down-
turn in the early 2000s. There were no jobs
in Pittsburgh, which sucked, so I thought,
This is going to be my low point. I am go-
ing to apply for a job at McDonalds. I loved
Pittsburgh and wanted to stay there, and
then I got turned down from McDonalds
for not having enough retail experience.
I was like, no, this is my low point. My
unemployment was close to running out,
and some of my friends who had moved to
D.C. were saying, There are jobs here. I
looked online and put my application in at
a few places, and one of the places that
wrote back was Google. I got a couple of
other offers, which was amazing because
I went from turned down from McDon-
alds to getting several offers for tech-
nical, entry-level positions. And back in
 CLOUD DATA MINE SDN STARTER KITS
2004, it was like, yes, I want to work for
Google!
Back then, Google was smaller, so [after
I got my first job there in the data centers],
my manager called up the director of net-
work engineering and said, Hey, Ive got
a woman who really wants to get into your
field. What should we do? So the director
of networking at the time, Cathy Chen, who
is awesome, said, Well, we have some de-
ployments going on so how about she just
shadows and see how we work together?
She can learn whats going on.
I started doing that and shadowing more
and more. And I realized I was spending all
of my time on the network and none of my
3 9 N E T W O R K E V O L U T I O N, M A R C H 2 0 1 5
PULSE CHECK IoT THE SUBNET
time on the data center, so then I moved
over to the networking team.
OK, one more geeky question:
Whats your favorite video game?
Its actually probably still Baldurs Gate or
Baldurs Gate 2. Its a 90s D&D [Dungeons
& Dragons] game, and they just rereleased
it last year with a lot of bug fixes and upped
resolution. It runs on my Mac laptop, and
its still so much fun. Even though the
graphics have obviously not aged as well, I
still think good storyline and good game-
play make for an awesome game. I have
replayed it twice since it rereleased, and its
still a great game. n
 CONTRIBUTORS

DINA GERDEMAN is as a freelance writer and editor, de-

veloping content and editing copy for various Web publi-
cations, including CMO.com, Harvard Business Schools
publication and TechTarget publications. She has 16 Network Evolution is a SearchNetworking.com e-publication.
years additional experience as a journalist and holds both
Kate Gerwig, Editorial Director
a bachelors degree in journalism and masters degree in
Jessica Scarpati, Features and E-zine Editor
communications from the University of Florida.
Kara Gattine, Executive Managing Editor

Chuck Moozakis, Executive Editor

SEAN M. KERNER is an IT consultant, technology enthusi-
Antone Gonsalves, Director of News
ast and tinkerer, and has been known to spend his spare
Brenda L. Horrigan, Associate Managing Editor
time immersed in the study of the Klingon language and
satellite pictures of Area 51. He has pulled Token Ring, Gina Narcisi, Senior News Writer

configured NetWare and has been known to compile his Linda Koury, Director of Online Design

own Linux kernel. He consults to industry and media or- Neva Maniscalco, Graphic Designer

ganizations on technology issues.

FOR SALES INQUIRIES, PLEASE CONTACT:
Doug Olender, Senior Vice President/Group Publisher
dolender@techtarget.com
JESSICA SCARPATI is features and e-zine editor of
Network Evolution in TechTargets Networking Media
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@
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working Media Group. Prior to joining TechTarget, she
TechTarget, 275 Grove Street, Newton, MA 02466
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