In the vacuum of two network engineers arguing, there are non-existent ideal situations where networks are built, grow or shrink congruently, and never have bugs. In perpetuity. Forever and ever. Amen. The Forces of Evil From the moment we conceive of a network and through the end of its life, there are numerous competing forces…
IT is dead. All hail Systems Engineering!
IT vendors live or die based on their ability to manage complexity on behalf of their users. This is true of all vendors: Software companies, hardware companies, cloud services companies, etc. This is true, really, of all types of systems. Cars are driven by idiots everywhere because they piss me off every single day on…
Root Cause Analysis, or Path Scrub?
In the Service-Provider world, there is the concept of a “circuit design review” or “path scrub” or “Class A.” Typically you would ask for this to be done when you have chronic issues with a circuit and you need a closer look at every device in the path to determine what is going on. This…
Infineta and Parallelization, Part 1
1. Opinions are like… In the past 5 years I’ve participated in three proper evaluations of WAN acceleration products. Twice with Cisco’s products (an older and then a newer product) and once with Riverbed. On the surface, the viability of these products seems obvious. Locality of Reference (both in transmission and in storage) is a…
The Sad State of Data Center Networking
Something about next-generation Data Center networking has been bothering me lately. For a while now, there has been this nagging sensation somewhere in the back of my mind telling me that its just not adding up. While I was at Network Field Day 3, I was able to connect some of the dots and form…
Virtualizing Network Services, Part 1: The Beginning
The Purpose of the “Network” In this series of articles I intend to walk through a series of diagrams with a narrative that will lead us to a “cloud” and “automation” ready network design. Before we get started, we have to first answer a fundamental question: What does the network do? The purpose of…
Pill-Chomping Hackers and Security Whack-a-Mole
Tonight on twitter I saw an argument about how social-security numbers and credit card numbers are benign pieces of information and that they are only dangerous because of how banks and other organizations use them. I smell bullsh*t. Most PacketPushers followers are engineers. They get paid to think. We have some non-technical people too: Managers,…
Network, Interrupted
Dear Cisco and Juniper: Its been a good run, Cisco. Thank you for the CCIE. Thank you Juniper for the JNCIE. I learned a lot about networking because of you. But you are irrelevant now. Right now, I can buy a 64-core server with 768GB of RAM from HP for a mere $57k. That includes…
Being Good at IT Stuff
I’ve been meaning to write a brief entry about careers in IT. After reading Ethan’s CCIE vs Experience and First Job articles, and remembering Tony’s Dare to be Stupid article, I thought I’d rudely insert myself into the conversation. This is more of a rant than anything, so I may meander a bit… I never…
