Networking is certainly going through a transition period especially with SDN and the application of machine learning to network data. This video is an interesting perspective from AT&T

I have always had an interest in the use of a single computing device that could be used in different ways. Cell Phones have become very powerful and are just as good as any low end laptop or desktop computer. Is it going backwards to have these solutions? Could someone just get a low cost Chromebook versus getting a laptop shell for your cell phone?

This company recently had a successful crowdfunding campaign called Superbook. The Phone Connects to the Laptop like shell via the MHL USB port. They also provide an application called ​​​​​​Andromium to give a laptop style feel to the user interface of Android.

My preference would be something that uses a wireless connection (Wifi etc.) to the phone instead of a wired solution.
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Why would someone get this over a low cost laptop? First of all it is very low cost at about $150 with all the add-ons available. Secondly, they leverage both Android and Windows which seems to have good foundations for building an outstanding user experience. The other important factor here is the availability of cloud computing to store documents, videos and Photos. 

Here are two possible use cases for using this device:

1. Developing Country User - Someone in a developing country that can only afford a cell phone could use this device to get a full computing experience for editing documents and other tasks.

2. Corporate Professional - Most professionals get a laptop from work which is not wise to use for very personal things. This device could be used as a supplement with an existing smartphone to accomplish personal computing needs.

There are other use cases for this device but for now, lets start with those two and see how this plays out in time. There are several other options out there to convert a phone into a primary computing device. We will do some discussion on those in the next post on this topic.

AT&T is working with Colt Technology Services to provision network services using a programmatic API-to-API interface between separate software-defined networking (SDN) architectures.
The test occurred between two networks — one in the U.S. and one in Europe — and demonstrated that enterprises can provision on-demand, scalable network services across multiple locations and multiple networks, even networks from different service providers.

​Read More.. 
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We have always being interested to find a solution that uses a single device for multiple computing needs. There have been some initiatives to utilize a smartphone as the engine for a Laptop or even desktop computer (Check out - Casetop). This can work fairly well but the phone screen is generally too small to do any meaningful reading on its own, so that brings in the need for a tablet. We are sure there are ways to design a tablet that you could plug the phone into for the expanded screen size and there have been some attempts. We will explore this topic more in the next post but in the mean time we are sharing an article about Android being a Computing platform of choice.

Check out - Android PC Article 

Recently, I was looking to find a 2-in-1 hybrid tablet which can be used as a laptop. The tablet is required to read so that is a must but also need to be able to create content on the road so prefer an integrated keyboard like a notebook.  There is a strong preference for Android based tablets and we did have a 2-in-1 before which is an ASUS tablet but the touch screen started to get flaky and not work most of the time, so the hunt begun.

 It seems impossible to find a pure android 2-in-1 tablet/laptop. The only two brands that came up were ASUS and Sony and did not want to go with ASUS at this point based on past experience but then the Sony was priced way too high for this purpose. On the other hand, if we look outside the Android ecosystem, Apple tablets does have plenty after market keyboard options including ZAGG and Clamcase Pro.

Looking forward, it seems that windows is now dominating the natural 2-in-1 market with most of the major PC vendors selling windows 10 with Tablet and Laptop hybrids. Definitely seems that Google missed that opportunity by wasting time on the Chromebook when they could have opened the hybrid market especially for low to medium priced offerings with Android.

One good option with the windows tablet approach is that there are several emulator software that runs Android on a PC. This means you could have the best of both worlds and indeed it does work..

The moral of the story is that Google missed this opportunity and we are pretty sure there is a market out there for a well designed android tablet hybrid. At this point, you either go Apple Ipad with Clamcase style keyboard or stick with the many windows options reluctantly.

Enjoy the hunt!!!
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We all know that greener energy is good for all. For example in lesser developed countries, many areas does not have reliable modern energy sources. The economics of wiring some of these areas are not very attractive and this means that newer forms of energy would be more suitable such as wind, solar and bio-fuels.  A key challenge to many of these energy sources is the whole issue of storing the energy when its available especially in the case of solar. 

One key potential in this area is the whole concept of Aluminum Air batteries which can last much longer than the traditional batteries per charge. In fact an experiment was done where they could drive for over 1000 miles on a single charge using a regular sized car. This is very encouraging and exciting to know..

An Israeli company Phinergy is one of several researching solutions in this space.  Check out Phinergy now

P4 Is becoming a very useful language to change how network devices are programmed. Find more details on the specifications at p4.org. See the video for a demonstration on this new approach

Software Defined Networking (SDN) does have a place in the future but it may evolve in different ways especially with innovations like P4

There is definitely mixed feelings about where OpenFlow is today in terms of real world use cases and what could be done in the future to make it really useful.

Current Use Cases:

1. Hybird port - This seem to have become the most practical use case for enterprises without too much disruption. In this application, the switch data plane primarily operates independently for packet forwarding (traditional protocols). Openflow is then applied to edge ports to make important policy decisions especially around security or services chaining. Several vendors have advanced this approach including HP, Meru Networks and Brocade.

2. SDN WAN - This application uses Openflow to manage the overall WAN connectivity and apply policies to the overall movement of packets. This is very practical as the migration overhead is very low but the benefits are significant. Sonus Networks does have a good solution in this area.

3. Open Source - This has become a very good vehicle to advance the overall SDN agenda. Projects such as ONOS and Opendaylight are creating controllers and applications that could really help this approach longer term. On the switch side Open Networking Linux does have some traction while some vendors are implementing Open vSwitch on physical switches.

4. Overlay - Since there have been limitations with hardware implementations of SDN, several vendors have focused on vSwitch style solutions with the use of encapsulation protocols such as VxLAN and NVGRE to inter-operate with the physical switch network. A good example these solutions would be VMware NSX and Midokura Midonet.

How can we bring some of these solutions to a fully implementable physical network SDN solution?

Areas to Improve:

While the Open networking movement has created new models to deploy SDN and Openflow, there is still some work needed in terms of commercial deployments.

One key feature that is needed in both commercial switches and Controllers is the full implementation of Multiple Table pipelines. On the switch side, the Broadcom OF-DPA SDK is one means to implement things but there is still a lack of support in shipping commercial SDN controllers. Getting this done would solve the major scaling challenges with traditional switches.

The next challenge; how to ensure migration in the most challenging of situations? Examples would be Campus networks and Enterprise Data Centers. The larger vendors will not embrace all the attributes of Open SDN, so in that case existing networks will not have a clear path except for the case of  software based overlay solutions.  An important note is that Switches could also initiate and terminate overlay tunnels which means the network edge could be fully SDN while the network core remains as legacy.

Conclusion

Openflow and SDN has actually struggled to take hold based on many factors within the industry but there seems to be some good opportunities to move things forward in the next year or two.