Worth Reading: P4

P4 , the language that could be a successor to OpenFlow , isn’t a sure thing yet, but it’s certainly captured the imagination of certain vendors, particularly on the chip side. via sdn central

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Worth Reading: What’s Your KPI?

In our quest to make business and work as mechanical and inhuman as possible over the past hundred years, every position in many large organizations has been sliced and diced into tiny pieces so that each piece can be measured and evaluated against a chart posted on the wall. via linkedin

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New technology watch ‘net

A few thoughts on new technology from around the web over the last week. Is data center software defined networks crossing the chasm? According to the Next Platform, for instance, it is —

And the answer is that it is in Gartner’s slope of enlightenment, that it is crossing Moore’s chasm, and that it is in a period where market share is being set month by month. If you follow the assumptions made in the above analysis, then 2015 will represent at most 1 percent to 3 percent of the total revenue that will occur in the datacenter SDN market over the next five years. It is an exciting time to be in datacenter networking.

This still leaves me with a question, however — what does a “software defined network” really mean? From one perspective, I’ve been working on software defined networks since the mid-1990’s. It is the software based centralized and distributed control planes that have defined the network ever since then; the last hardware defined network I worked on was based on inverse multiplexers and physical interconnects to direct and manage traffic. So what do we mean when we say “software defined network” today? It seems the biggest Continue reading

Worth Reading: Fairy Tales and Hard Work

In practical reality, people don’t live like MBA simulations expect most of the time. Leaders say that we want our employees to be rational actors, but then condemn and punish employees for acting rationally, logically and appropriately when they find themselves trapped in an inherently unfair operating environment. via business reporter

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Why aren’t you teaching?

There is an old saw about teaching and teachers: “Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach.” This seems to be a widely believed thought in the engineering world (though perhaps less in the network engineering world than many other parts of engineering) — but is it true? In fact, to go farther, does this type of thinking actually discourage individual engineers teaching, or training, in a more formal way in the networking world? Let me give you my experience.

What I’ve discovered across the years is something slightly different: if you can’t explain it to someone else in a way they can understand it, then you don’t really know it. There are few ways to put this into practice in the real world better than intentionally taking on the task of teaching others what you know. In fact, I’ve probably learned much more in the process of preparing to teach than I ever have in “just doing.” There is something about spending the time in thinking through how to explain something in a number of different ways that encourages understanding. To put it in other terms, teaching makes you really think about how something works.

Don’t get Continue reading

Worth Reading; Squatting

If the rightful entity decides to route them or transfer them to someone else who then routes them, then everyone has a problem. The network that is squatting will not be able to get to the legitimate users of the block. The legitimate user of the block will not be able to get to a sizable number of eyeballs on those squatting ISPs’ networks. via teamarin

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QOTW: Labor and Morality

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HL: Inside Cisco IOS Software Architecture

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Worth Reading: Omnipath

Omni-Path, known internally by the generic code name “Storm Lake,” is a vital ingredient in Intel’s Scalable Systems Framework, which was announced earlier this year as a collection of hardware and systems software components to build parallel systems for running simulation and modeling workloads and increasingly other kinds of data analytics jobs that benefit from running on clusters with low latency and high bandwidth interconnects. via nextplatform

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Life Rafts

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Worth Listening: Datanauts 15

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Worth Reading: The 10x Rule

How can you determine whether a new technology is worth the costs and risks and costs of adoption? Start by calculating them. One guideline is the 10X rule: if you can expect a return of 10 times your investment, then it’s worth it. via netcraftsmen

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Reaction: Innovation and the Internet

Industries mature, of course. That they do so shouldn’t be surprising to anyone who’s watched the world for very long. The question is — do they mature in a way that places a few players at the “top,” leaving the rest to innovate along the edges? Or do they leave broad swaths of open space in which many players can compete and innovate? Through most of human history, the answer has been the first: industries, in the modern age, tend to ossify into a form where a few small players control most of the market, leaving the smaller players to innovate along the edges. When the major impetus in building a new company is to “get bought,” and the most common way for larger companies to innovate is by buying smaller companies (or doing “spin ins”), then you’ve reached a general point of stability that isn’t likely to change much.

Is the networking industry entering this “innovation free zone?” Or will the networking industry always be a market with more churn, and more innovation? There are signs in both directions.

For instance, there’s the idea that once technology reaches a certain level of capability, there’s just no reason for Continue reading

Highlight: Get out of the way

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Worth Reading: IPv6 Performance

Every so often I hear the claim that some service or other does not support IPv6 not because of some technical issue, or some cost or business issue, but simply because the service operator is of the view that IPv6 offers an inferior level service as compared to IPv4, and by offering the service over IPv6 they would be exposing their clients to an inferior level of performance of the service. via potaroo.net

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Security ‘net: Google, Watson, and other thoughts

Encryption, security, and privacy are at the top of our list, it seems. The question is — who really cares about your privacy? Is Google a champion of freedom, or a threat to national sovereignty?

Google is unique in its leadership, plans, and global marketpower to accelerate the majority of all global Web traffic “going dark,” i.e. encrypted by default. Google’s “going dark” leadership seriously threatens to neuter sovereign nations’ law-enforcement and intelligence capabilities to investigate and prevent terrorism and crime going forward.

Or has Google just figured out that encryption is the best way to funnel all the world’s information through their servers so it can be properly indexed and used to its maximum commercial value?

But the truth about where the giants of tech stand on user privacy is another matter entirely. No organizations on earth have exploited users more than Google (GOOGL) and Facebook (FB) have in their zealous quest to boost ad revenues by providing users’ personal data – demographics, searches, email and location, among others – to an ever-growing list of digital advertisers.

Russ’ take: The truth is probably out there someplace, but I doubt it’s as clean cut as either of these articles Continue reading

Change of Venue: LinkedIn

I’m changing roles from Principal Engineer at Ericsson to the Architecture Team at LinkedIn. New adventure! But don’t worry, ‘net Work is staying open for thoughts about life as a network engineer.

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Worth Reading: Net Neutrality

The counterargument might be that we can’t let ISPs charge whatever they want because they have a monopoly. But that monopoly, insofar as it exists and isn’t simply an artifact of the huge capital costs that necessarily limit the number of competitors in the market, is a government creation. via dcj

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Assuming the worst is not the best assumption

It was too bad to be true, but I should have known that assuming the worst was not the best assumption. I was driving the “other” car, the Saab, on the way back from the METNAV shop around eight in the morning. Since the shop was located in the middle of the three runways, this meant I had to drive across the 18 taxiway, along the white lines painted between the C-141’s, C-130’s, KC-10’s, F-4’s, and sometimes other odds and ends, and then past the Tower, off the flightline, and onto the “surface streets.” As I was coming off a call at around three in the morning, I wasn’t in uniform. For some reason, I hadn’t driven my normal car — a white Jeep — so the folks in the Tower certainly wouldn’t recognize me.

So when the SP flipped his lights on and pulled in behind me, I was worried. Just as the lights came on, I remembered something really important: I had forgotten to put my sticker on the car. You see, to drive on the flightline, you had to have a sticker on your car. There were various colors for the different areas you could gain Continue reading

Another Year of Thankfulness

By the time you read this, I’ll be down at Oak Island on the North Carolina Coast, where my wife will be getting the turkey ready, and making a white chocolate cheesecake. No, I won’t tell you the address, but I will tell you this.

I’m thankful for this year.

I’m thankful for my family. For my wife and kids who put up with me and my insane schedule.

I’m thankful for my friends (I would list them all, but I’d probably forget someone, which would hurt feelings; it just doesn’t seem right to hurt anyone’s feelings today). Across the years, I’ve been taught so much about networking and engineering in the last 20+ years, from working on RADAR systems to large scale data centers. I’ve been given so many opportunities to write and speak, and been shown how to be just a better person.

I’m thankful that God has opened a door into a top notch PhD program, the support structure every PhD student needs to succeed, and two great mentors (more than anyone could ask for).

I know it’s not Thanksgiving in every country in the world. But there’s never a bad day to give thanks for what Continue reading