In this meet up we will talk about the different Buzz words in NFV and SDN space. What is SDN and the role it plays in networking. How do Containers fit into the whole space, and why is everyone so interested in containers? Lastly we will talk about how knowing about hardware and how to utilize the hardware functionality helps accelerate the functionality of VNFs in the OpenStack environment.

First talk begins at 5:30PM.

Talk 1: What is SDN really?

Software Defined Networking (SDN) is the hot topic in networking. There are many projects and products all claiming to be SDN, so what is it really? Why does SDN matter? and what is happening in the resurgent networking space?

About the speaker: Stephen Hemminger is a Linux developer who specializes in networking. He has worked for Linux Foundation, Brocade (Vyatta) and now Microsoft. As maintainer of the Linux bridging and the iproute2 utilities, he contributes regularly to the Linux kernel and DPDK projects. Having been involved with TCP/IP since the early days of UNIX, he is quite familiar with the congestion and SMP issues. Steve works on so integrating so many different networking pieces that he decided to give himself the title of Network Plumber.

Talk 2: Container networking

First virtual machines and now containers? What are containers, anyway? We’ll discuss what a container is, how it’s different from a virtual machine and then explore configuration options for networking in a container world. We’ll also go over some basic ways of putting containers together into applications and how to make Linux namespaces work for you.

About the speaker: Kevin Bohan is a software architect in the Network Platforms Group at Intel. He spends most of his time working on performance optimization of network virtualization technologies being utilized in the telecommunications industry. Prior to Intel, he worked in academia in the areas of advanced networking, supercomputing and embedded systems.

Talk 3: Server Networking for the Curious

Confused about the differences in server-based networking technologies? Maybe you’ve heard or read about DPDK, or FD.io VPP, or other technologies, but the bigger picture is hard to see. We’ll walk through a short survey of some of the most important and useful packet-processing tools, both in hardware and in open source, and why you might be interested in them.

About the speaker: Jim Chamings is a Sr. Software Engineer at Intel, working in the Datacenter Scale Engineering team. His focus is on enabling Cloud and SDN/NFV developers to get the maximum value out of their datacenters