A couple of days ago I got an idea for a new kind of networking site. The idea is to do something similar to dpreview.com but for network products.

I work a lot on network designs these days and part of the design is always what device to choose. Maybe I need a product that does NAT, IPSEC, 200 Mbit/s of throughput and has at least 4 ports. This is the kind of knowledge that you get from working on design and staying up to date with products from different vendors. There is not a community for people where they can find a broad range of products and get help choosing the right one based on different search criteria such as number of ports, features and the throughput.

What I would like to do as well is to have people write about the products. The product page said 200 Mbit/s but I got 500 Mbit/s with IMIX traffic. After enabling IPSEC I only got 80 Mbit/s. These kind of figures are very difficult to find. There could then be some kind of rating or voting system to rate if the post is helpful to sort out if people are posting misleading information.

I would also like to build a community where we exchange experiences on the products. Are the buffers too small? Can we alter QoS settings to help with the small buffers?

There would be a page linking to data sheets, presentations from conferences or other useful links on the products and also probably some kind of forums.

People could contribute with articles on Netflow, performance testing, how to setup a Netflow collector, how to use Spirent or other equivalent products. A lot of this relates to network performance but that would not be the only use for such a networking site.

I think we have a possibility to build something great but the problem is I have no experience with web design and to build an appropriate platform for this. I’m not sure what it could be based on? WordPress? Drupal? Wiki?

Either I need to find someone with web design and coding skills (and time) to help with this or try to crowd fund it in some way to pay a company to help with the design and development of the site.

Maybe I’m the only one wanting this? Maybe I’m crazy? 🙂 Please give me feedback if you want to see this happen and how you could contribute to it through either putting in your time and/or money into it.

Appreciate any feedback you guys have for me!

Checking community interest for a new kind of networking site

10 thoughts on “Checking community interest for a new kind of networking site

  • October 28, 2014 at 4:43 am
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    I think this is brilliant idea. There are a lot of engineers who struggle to find the right hardware due to a lack of hardware knowledge or exposure. Again this is not for everybody, not all in the industry who are architects or designer that produces hardware BoMs. Good luck & happy to contribute in any way I can.

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  • October 28, 2014 at 11:46 am
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    Yes, i agree with you. We really need a place to get such valuable informations with less hustle. Recently, i was trying to find some details on the difference between Cisco and Juniper equipments but i could get enough information.

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  • October 29, 2014 at 12:34 pm
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    Its a great idea but probably difficult to get set up. I would use the site and try to post to it if it ever comes to fruition.

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    • October 29, 2014 at 1:48 pm
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      Yes, getting it set up and finding the funds is the difficult part. I will at least give it my best to get something started.

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  • October 30, 2014 at 3:05 pm
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    I don’t have alot of gear that comes though here, but we always run our own benchmarks on it and I would be happy to post those

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  • October 30, 2014 at 7:51 pm
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    I think this is great idea, I will happy to contribute.

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  • October 31, 2014 at 8:45 pm
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    Sounds amazing… i will happy to contribute and to be part of this project.

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  • November 1, 2014 at 4:35 pm
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    Sounds great, many times suffering lack of information about real performance.
    And of course, happily give back to a community and present my test results.

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  • November 5, 2014 at 9:39 pm
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    This could be a project that packet pushers could help with. If interested get in touch and we can help with several aspects. Greg

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