Back In The Saddle Of A Horse Of A Different Color

I’ve been asked a few times in the past year if I missed being behind a CLI screen or I ever got a hankering to configure some networking gear. The answer is a guarded “yes”, but not for the reason that you think.

Type Casting

CCIEs are keyboard jockeys. Well, the R&S folks are for sure. Every exam has quirks, but the R&S folks have quirky QWERTY keyboard madness. We spend a lot of time not just learning commands but learning how to input them quickly without typos. So we spend a lot of time with keys and a lot less time with the mouse poking around in a GUI.

However, the trend in networking has been to move away from these kinds of input methods. Take the new Aruba 8400, for instance. The ArubaOS-CX platform that runs it seems to have been built to require the least amount of keyboard input possible. The whole system runs with an API backend and presents a GUI that is a series of API calls. There is a CLI, but anything that you can do there can easily be replicated elsewhere by some other function.

Why would a company do this? To Continue reading

How Should We Handle Failure?

I had an interesting conversation this week with Greg Ferro about the network and how we’re constantly proving whether a problem is or is not the fault of the network. I postulated that the network gets blamed when old software has a hiccup. Greg’s response was:

Which led me to think about why we have such a hard time proving the innocence of the network. And I think it’s because we have a problem with applications.

Snappy Apps

Writing applications is hard. I base this on the fact that I am a smart person and I can’t do it. Therefore it must be hard, like quantum mechanics and figuring out how to load the dishwasher. The few people I know that do write applications are very good at turning gibberish into usable radio buttons. But they have a world of issues they have to deal with.

Error handling in applications is a mess at best. When I took C Programming in college, my professor was an actual coder during the day. She told us during the error handling Continue reading

Legacy IT Sucks

In my last few blog posts, I’ve been looking back at some of the ideas that were presented at Future:Net at VMworld this year. While I’ve discussed resource contention, hardware longevity, and event open source usage, I’ve avoided one topic that I think dictates more of the way our networks are built and operated today. It has very little to do with software, merchant hardware, or even development. It’s about legacy.

They Don’t Make Them Like They Used To

Every system in production today is running some form of legacy equipment. It doesn’t have to be an old switch in a faraway branch office closet. It doesn’t have to be an old Internet router. Often, it’s a critical piece of equipment that can’t be changed or upgraded without massive complications. These legacy pieces of the organization do more to dictate IT policies than any future technology can hope to impact.

In my own career, I’ve seen this numerous times. It could be the inability to upgrade workstation operating systems because users relied on WordPerfect for document creation and legacy document storage. And new workstations wouldn’t run WordPerfect. Or perhaps it cost too much to upgrade. Here, legacy Continue reading

Penny Pinching With Open Source

You might have seen this Register article this week which summarized a Future:Net talk from Peyton Koran. In the article and the talk, Peyton talks about how the network vendor and reseller market has trapped organizations into a needless cycle of bad hardware and buggy software. He suggests that organizations should focus on their new “core competency” of software development and run whitebox or merchant hardware on top of open source networking stacks. He says that developers can use code that has a lot of community contributions and shares useful functionality. It’s a high and mighty goal. However, I think the open source part of the equation is going to cause some issues.

A Penny For Your Thoughts

The idea behind open source isn’t that hard to comprehend. Everything available to see and build. Anyone can contribute and give back to the project and make the world a better place. At least, that’s the theory. Reality is sometimes a bit different.

Many times, I’ve had off-the-record conversations with organizations that are consuming open source resources and projects as a starting point for building something that will end up containing many proprietary resources. When I ask them about contributing back to Continue reading

Network Longevity – Think Car, Not iPhone

One of the many takeaways I got from Future:Net last week was the desire for networks to do more. The presenters were talking about their hypothesized networks being able to make intelligent decisions based on intent and other factors. I say “hypothesized” because almost everyone admitted that we aren’t quite there. Yet. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that perhaps the timeline for these mythical networks is a bit skewed in favor of refresh cycles that are shorter than we expect.

Software Eats The World

SDN has changed the way we look at things. Yes, it’s a lot of hype. Yes, it’s an overloaded term. But it’s also the promise of getting devices to do much more than we had ever dreamed. It’s about automation and programmability and, now, deriving intent from plain language. It’s everything we could ever want a simple box of ASICs to do for us and more.

But why are we asking so much? Why do we now believe that the network is capable of so much more than it was just five years ago? Is it because we’ve developed a revolutionary new method for making chips that are ten times Continue reading

Resource Contention In IT – Time Is Never Enough

I’m at Future:NET this week and there’s a lot of talk about the future of what networking is going to look like from the perspective of vendors like Apstra, Veriflow, and Forward Networks. There’s also a great deal of discussion from customers and end users as well. One of the things that I think is being missed in all the talk about resources.

Time Is Not On Your Side

Many of the presenters, like Truman Boyes of Bloomberg and Peyton Maynard-Koran of EA, discussed the idea of building boxes from existing components instead of buying them from established networking vendors like Cisco and Arista. The argument does hold some valid ideas. If you can get your hardware from someone like EdgeCore or Accton and get your software from someone else like Pluribus Networks or Pica8 it looks like a slam dunk. You get 90% to 95% of a solution that you could get from Cisco with much less cost to you overall.

Companies like Facebook and Google have really pioneered this solution. Facebook’s OCP movement is really helping networking professionals understand the development that goes into building their own switches. Facebook’s commitment is also helping reduce the price of the Continue reading

The Complexity Of Choice

Russ White had an interesting post this week about the illusion of choices and how herd mentality is driving everything from cell phones to network engineering and design. I understand where Russ is coming from with his points, but I also think that Russ has some underlying assumptions in his article that ignore some of the complexity that we don’t always get to see in the world. Especially when it comes to the herd.

Collapse Into Now

Russ talks about needing to get a new mobile phone. He talks about how there are only really two choices left in the marketplace and how he really doesn’t want either of them. While I applaud Russ and his decision to stand up for his principals, there are more than two choices. He could easily purchase a used Windows mobile phone from eBay. He could choose to run a Palm Tree 650 or a Motorola RAZR from 2005. He could even choose not to carry a phone.

You’re probably saying, “That’s not a fair comparison. He needs feature X on his phone, so he can’t use phone Y.”

And you would be right! So right, in fact, that you’ve already missed one Continue reading

Automating Documentation

Tedium is the enemy of productivity. The fastest way for a task to not be done is to make it long, boring, and somewhat complicated. People who feel that something is tedious or repetitive are the ones more likely to marginalize a task. And I think I speak for the entire industry when I say that there is no task more tedious and boring than documentation. So how can we fix it?

Tell Me What You Did

I’m not a huge fan of documentation. When I decide on a plan of action, I rarely write it down step-by-step unless I’m trying to train someone. Even then, it looks more like notes with keywords instead of a narrative to follow. It’s a habit that has been borne out of years of firefighting in networks and calls to “do it faster”. The essential items of a task are refined and reduced until all that remains is the work and none of the ancillary items, like documentation.

Based on my previous life as a network engineer, I can honestly say that I’m not alone in this either. My old company made lots of money doing network discovery engagements. Sometimes these came because the Continue reading

Virtual Reality and Skeuomorphism

Remember skeuomorphism? It’s the idea that the user interface of a program needs to resemble a physical a physical device to help people understand how to use it. Skeuomorphism is not just a software thing, however. Things like faux wooden panels on cars and molded clay rivets on pottery are great examples of physical skeuomorphism. However, most people will recall the way that Apple used skeuomorphism in the iOS when they hear the term.

Scott Forrestal was the genius behind the skeuomorphism in iOS for many years. Things like adding a fake leather header to the Contacts app, the wooden shelves in the iBooks library, and the green felt background in the Game Center app are the examples that stand out the most. Forrestal used skeuomorphism to help users understand how to use apps on the new platform. Users needed to be “trained” to touch the right tap targets or to feel more familiar with an app on sight.

Skeuomorphism worked quite well in iOS for many years. However, when Jonny Ive took over as the lead iOS developer, he started phasing out skeuomorphism starting in iOS 7. With the advent of flat design, people didn’t want fake leather and Continue reading

It’s Probably Not The Wi-Fi

After finishing up Mobility Field Day last week, I got a chance to reflect on a lot of the information that was shared with the delegates. Much of the work in wireless now is focused on analytics. Companies like Cape Networks and Nyansa are trying to provide a holistic look at every part of the network infrastructure to help professionals figure out why their might be issues occurring for users. And over and over again, the resound cry that I heard was “It’s Not The Wi-Fi”

Building A Better Access Layer

Most of wireless is focused on the design of the physical layer. If you talk to any professional and ask them to show your their tool kit, they will likely pull out a whole array of mobile testing devices, USB network adapters, and diagramming software that would make AutoCAD jealous. All of these tools focus on the most important part of the equation for wireless professionals – the air. When the physical radio spectrum isn’t working users will complain about it. Wireless pros leap into action with their tools to figure out where the fault is. Either that, or they are very focused on providing the right design from Continue reading

The History of The Wireless Field Day AirCheck

Mobility Field Day 2 just wrapped up in San Jose. It’s always a little bittersweet to see the end of a successful event. However, one thing that does bring a bit of joy to the end of the week is the knowledge that one of the best and longest running traditions at the event continues. That tradition? The Wireless/Mobility Field Day AirCheck.

The Gift That Keeps Giving

The Wireless Field Day AirCheck story starts where all stories start. The beginning. At Wireless Field Day 1 in March of 2011, I was a delegate and fresh off my first Tech Field Day event just a month before. I knew some wireless stuff and was ready to learn a lot more about site surveys and other great things. Little did I know that I was about to get something completely awesome and unexpected.

As outlined in this post, Fluke Networks held a drawing at the end of their presentation for a first-generation AirCheck handheld wireless troubleshooting tool. I was thrilled to be the winner of this tool. I took it home and immediately put it to work around my office. I found it easy to use and it provided great information Continue reading

Context From The People

Are you ready for the flood of context-based networking solutions? If not, it’s time to invest in sandbags. After the launch of Cisco’s Intuitive Network solution set at Cisco Live, the rest of the context solutions are coming out to play. Granted, some of them are like Apstra and have been doing this for a while. Others are going to be jumping on the bandwagon of providing a solution that helps with context. But why are we here and why now?

Creating Context

The truth is that we’ve had context in the network for decades now. It’s not a part number that we can order from a vendor. It’s not a command that we type into the CLI to activate. In fact, it’s nothing that you can see at all right now, unless there’s a mirror handy.

The context in networks has been provided by people for as far back as anyone can remember. You do it every day without consciously realizing it. You interpret error messages and disregard those that aren’t important. People know how to program VLANs correctly to segment traffic in certain ways. Security context, application context, and more are delivered by breathing, thinking humans.

We have Continue reading

Mythbusting the CCIE Continuing Education Program

It’s been about a month since the CCIE Continuing Education program was announced ahead of Cisco Live. There was a fair amount of discussion about it both on this blog as well as other places, like Jeff Fry’s post. Overall, the response has been positive. However, there are a few questions and ideas about the program that are simply not true. And no, this is not The Death Of The CCIE Program (just Google it). So, let’s take a look at this edition of Mythbusters for the CCIE CE program.

Myth #1: The CE Program Is Just A Way For Cisco To Sell More Training

This was a good one. The list of CE classes that was release at the beginning of the program included Cisco Live classes as well as Cisco Authorized training classes. Those were the only thing on the list as of right now. When some people saw the list, they jumped to the conclusion that the reason why the CE program exists is because Cisco wants to push their training courses. Let’s look at that.

Let’s say you want to start a global program that requires people to keep track of their training credits to turn Continue reading

Why Do You Still Blog?

After recording an excellent session on social media at Cisco Live with The Network Collective (@NetCollectivePC), I started thinking about blogging and where it stands in the grand scheme of information sharing. With the rise of podcasting and video blogging now in full swing, I was even asked by my friend Michael Stump “Do you see blogging as a dying form of content?” For obvious reasons, I said “no”, but I wanted to explain two major reasons why.

Needle In A Haystack

One of the major reasons why I still blog through written form is searchability. When I started blogging almost seven years ago I wanted to create a place where I could put down my thoughts about topics and share them with everyone. More by accident than design, many of those thoughts became popular topics of conversation. Even today, some of my posts are being used to help people figure out problems and address issues that aren’t well documented in other places.

But why? How can posts many years old still be relevant to audiences today? Because of searching. Use of Google, DuckDuckGo, and even Bing allow people to search for specific error messages Continue reading

Not The Cisco of John Chambers Anymore

I just got back from Cisco Live 2017 last night and I had a blast at the show. There was a lot of discussion about new architectures, new licensing models, and of course, Tech Field Day Extra. However, one of the most interesting topics went largely under the radar. I think we’re fully in the transition of Cisco away from being the Company of John Chambers.

Steering A Tall Ship

John Chambers wasn’t the first CEO of Cisco. But he’s the one that most people would recognize. He transformed the company into the juggernaut that it is today. He watched Cisco ascend to the leader in the networking space and helped it transform into a company that embraced voice, security, and even servers and compute as new business models.

John’s Cisco is a very unique animal. It’s not a single company. It’s a collection of many independent companies with their own structures and goals all competing with each other for resources. If John decided that UCS was more important to his goals this quarter, he shifted some of the support assets to focus on that business unit. It was a featured product, complete with healthy discounts to encourage user adoption.

Continue reading

Subscription Defined Networking

Cisco’s big announcement this week ahead of Cisco Live was their new Intent-based Networking push. This new portfolio does include new switching platforms in the guise of the Catalyst 9000 series, but the majority of the innovation is coming in the software layer. Articles released so far tout the ability of the network to sense context, provide additional security based on advanced heuristics, and more. But the one thing that seems to be getting little publicity is the way you’re going to be paying for software going forward.

The Bottom Line

Cisco licensing has always been an all-or-nothing affair for the most part. You buy a switch and you have two options – basic L2 switching or everything the switch supports. Routers are similar. Through the early 15.x releases, Cisco routers could be loaded with an advanced image that ran every service imaginable. Those early 15.x releases gave us some attempts at role-based licensing for packet, voice, and security device routers. However, those efforts were rolled back due to customer response.

Shockingly, voice licensing has been the most progressive part of Cisco’s licensing model for a while now. CallManager 4.x didn’t even bother. Hook things up and Continue reading

Don’t Build Big Data With Bad Data

I was at Pure Accelerate 2017 this week and I saw some very interesting things around big data and the impact that high speed flash storage is going to have. Storage vendors serving that market are starting to include analytics capabilities on the box in an effort to provide extra value. But what happens when these advances cause issues in the training of algorithms?

Garbage In, Garbage Out

One story that came out of a conversation was about training a system to recognize people. In the process of training the system, the users imported a large number of faces in order to help the system start the process of differentiating individuals. The data set they started with? A collection of male headshots from the Screen Actors Guild. By the time the users caught the mistake, the algorithm had already proven that it had issues telling the difference between test subjects of particular ethnicities. After scrapping the data set and using some different diverse data sources, the system started performing much better.

This started me thinking about the quality of the data that we are importing into machine learning and artificial intelligence systems. The old computer adage of “garbage in, garbage Continue reading

CCIE Continuing Education – Learn Your away To Recertification

It looks like one of the best (or worst) kept secrets about the CCIE has finally come to pass. This week, Cisco announced that there is a new program in place to recertify your CCIE without the need to continually retake the written exam. How is this going to measure up?

The Learning Train

The idea behind continual recertification is very simple. Rather than shut down what you’ve got going on every 18 months to spend time studying for an exam, Cisco is giving current CCIEs and CCDEs the option of applying credit from educational sessions toward recertifying their credentials.
This is very similar to the way that it works in for a doctor or a lawyer. There are courses that you can take that provide a certain number of “points” for a given class. When you accumulate 100 points in a two year span, you can apply those points to recertification.
The credits are good for a maximum of three years from the date earned. You can’t carry them over between recertification periods or bank them in case your certification expires. Once you use the points to recert, you start back up the treadmill again.

We’ll Do It Live!

Continue reading

How To Make Mistakes

We all make mistakes. We type the wrong command. We use the wrong verb tense in an article. We leave out a critical step when explaining a process. It’s something that happens all the time. It’s avoidable through careful planning, but how do you handle things when the avoidable becomes unavoidable?

Making Amends, Not Mistakes

Once a mistake is out in the open and noticeable, it’s done. You can’t pretend it didn’t happen or that it’s not affecting things. That’s when you need to own up to what happened and fix it. Sometimes that’s not always easy. Even the best person is reticent to admit to being fallible. So the process for fixing a mistake isn’t always easy. But it is important.

1. Realize You’ve Made A Mistake – As amazing as it sounds, this is sometimes the hardest part of the deal. It’s easy to see that you’ve typed in the wrong command to a router and that the output isn’t what you were expecting. But what about those errors you don’t immediately catch. How about hearing the incorrect name at a dinner party and calling someone by the wrong name for an entire night? Or incorrectly spelling or pronouncing Continue reading

It’s Not The Size of Your Conference Community

Where do you get the most enjoyment from your conference attendance? Do you like going to sessions and learning about new things? Do you enjoy more of the social aspect of meeting friends and networking with your peers? Maybe it’s something else entirely?

It’s The Big Show

When you look at shows like Cisco Live, VMworld, or Interop ITX, there’s a lot going on. There are diverse education tracks attended by thousands of people. You could go to Interop and bounce from a big data session into a security session, followed by a cloud panel. You could attend Cisco Live and never talk about networking. You could go to VMworld and only talk about networking. There are lots of opportunities to talk about a variety of things.

But these conferences are huge. Cisco and VMware both take up the entire Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas. When in San Francisco, both of these events dwarf the Moscone Center and have to spread out into the surrounding hotels. That means it’s easy to get lost or be overlooked. I’ve been to Cisco Live before and never bumped into people I know from my area that said they Continue reading