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Cisco Express Forwarding (2023 Edition)

Cisco Express Forwarding (2023 Edition)

CEF Deep Dive (commands) for IOS-XE C9300 used as example Model: C9300L-24UXG-4X Control Plane (CP) = R0 Data Plane (DP) = F0, UADP/ASIC CEF Background:  Why Cisco Express Forwarding (CEF)?  “Necessity is the mother of invention” -proverb Let’s take a trip in the networking time machine back to simpler times (late 80s, early 90s). I’m going to start with the fundamentals of software-based forwarding and all the pipeline steps involved. We didn’t have fancy ASICs like we do today, so everything was done…

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Battle of the 16-bit Audio Processors

Battle of the 16-bit Audio Processors

Be Kind, Please REWIND I have fond memories of the late 80’s early 90’s, because it’s what got me so addicted to hardware and what I like to refer to as the “healing powers” of video games. As a kid with severe asthma, I spent many of childhood years in a hospital. Medicine was not where it is today for controlling asthma, and they really just treated the symptoms the best they could. In fact, the same thing someone would…

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The Road to Network Engineering

The Road to Network Engineering

          I was inspired to document my career journey after reading a post by Packet Pushers @ecbanks. Circa 1997 I was working in a local computer shop called Circle Computer in Ephrata, PA. We were a Commodore Amiga shop, but Commodore went bankrupt and had to start pushing x86 PC’s. The Intel Pentium MMX processors were hot at this time and Duke Nukem 3D was the FPS of choice. I was mostly responsible for building PCs…

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The Network. Intuitive.

The Network. Intuitive.

A New Network for a New Era Well, the cat is finally out the bag… I’ve been biting my lips for the last several months working on campus designs with customers. That’s because internally at Cisco, all the buzz was around bringing SDN and most importantly intent driven networking to the campus in a BIG way. This is very much akin to how Cisco transformed the data center with ACI. In fact, I’ve heard verbatim from customers “why doesn’t Cisco…

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