Buenos Aires

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Worth Reading: ISOC’s IOT White Paper

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Worth Reading: The Australian Cyber Security Report

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Multitasking, Microtasking, and Macrotasking

One of the most frustrating things in my daily life is reaching lunch and not having a single thing I can point to as “done” for the day. I’m certain this is something every engineer faces from time to time — or even all the time (like me), because even Dilbert has something to say about it.

This is all the more frustrating for me because I actually don’t have clones (contrary to rumor #1), and I actually do sleep (contrary to rumor #2). I even spend time with my wife and kids from time to time, as well as volunteer at a local church and seminary (teaching philosophy/ethics/logic/theology/worldview/apologetics to a high school class, and being a web master/all around IT resource, guest lecturer, etc., in the other). My life’s motto seems to be waste not a moment, from reading to writing to research to, well just about everything that doesn’t involve other people (I try to never be in a hurry when dealing with people, though this it’s honestly hard to do).

So, without clones, and with sleep, how can we all learn to be more productive? I’m no master of time (honestly), but my first rule is: Continue reading

QOTW: Knowledge

Knowledge depends on the direction given to our passions and on our moral habits. To calm our passions is to awaken in ourselves the sense of the universal; to correct ourselves is to bring out the sense of the true.
Sertillanges, The Intellectual Life

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Defining SDN Down

If a WAN product that uses software to control the flow of traffic is an SD-WAN, and a data center than uses software to build a virtual topology is an SD-DC, and a storage product that uses software to emulate traditional hardware storage products is SD storage, and a network where the control plane has been pulled into some sort of controller an SDN, aren’t my profile on LinkedIn, and my twitter username @rtggeek software defined people (SDP)? A related question — if there are already IoT vendors, and the IoT already has a market, can we declare the hype cycle dead and move on with our lives? Or is hype too useful to marketing folks to let it go that easily? One thing we do poorly in the networking world is define things. We’re rather sloppy about the language we use — and it shows.

Back on topic, but still to the point — maybe it’s time to rethink the way we use the phrase software defined. Does SD mean one thing emulating another? Does SD mean centralized control? Does SD mean software controlled? Does SD mean separating the control plane from the data plane? Does SD mean OpenFlow?

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Worth Reading: Thoughts on the Open Internet

I’m sure we’ve all heard about “the Open Internet.” The expression builds upon a rich pedigree of term “open” in various contexts. For example, “open government” is the governing doctrine which holds that citizens have the right to access the documents and proceedings of the government to allow for effective public oversight, a concept that appears to be able to trace its antecedents back to the age of enlightenment in 17th century Europe.

I would normally place worth reading items in the right column, Geoff has written a six part series about the open Internet that’s worth reading. I’ve put links to each piece here.

Thoughts on the Open Internet – Part 1: What Is “Open Internet”
Thoughts on the Open Internet – Part 2: The Where and How of “Internet Fragmentation”
Thoughts on the Open Internet – Part 3: Local Filtering and Blocking
Thoughts on the Open Internet – Part 4: Locality and Interdependence
Thoughts on the Open Internet – Part 5: Security
Thoughts on the Open Internet – Part 6: Final Thoughts

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Worth Reading: Open Switch Software

Facebook, NTT and Big Switch plan on Friday to demonstrate a combination of open source software that can be used to run a working networking switch — a step forward in creating open source alternatives to proprietary networking hardware and software. —via Light Reading

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HL: The Degree or the Certification?

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Worth Reading: Digital Content and the Fate of Businesses

There are two key differences between buying media in a physical format versus a digital one. First, there’s the technical aspect: Maintaining long-term access to a file requires a hard copy of it—that means, for example, downloading a film, not just streaming from a third party’s server. The second distinction is a bit more complicated, and it has to do with how the law has shaped digital rights in the past 15 years. It helps to think about the experience of a person giving up CDs and using iTunes for music purchases instead. —via the atlantic

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Worth Reading: The Future of Network Management

Is good performance and stress reporting something you look for before purchase? I sure don’t think they’re part of the vendor marketing! Until they are, good luck getting good reporting! —via netcraftsmen

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HL: Cisco Express Forwarding

…this book will provide the insight required to understand how CEF truly works inside Cisco’s routers and switches. This book can promote you to the elite; it is the last piece of the puzzle that will tell exactly how packets are moved inside a router.

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Bouy

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Worth Reading: Hybrid Infrastructure

Although industry experts anticipate a 44 percent annual growth in cloud-based workloads over the next several years, the reality is that despite rapid cloud adoption, many businesses will continue to have a significant part of their daily operations tied to physical infrastructure and its processes for many years to come. The Cloud is for everyone, but not for everything. — via the data center journal

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Rule 11 is your friend

It’s common enough in the networking industry — particularly right now — to bemoan the rate of change. In fact, when I worked in the Cisco Technical Assistance Center (TAC), we had a phrase that described how we felt about the amount of information and the rate of change: sipping through the firehose. This phrase has become ubiquitous in the networking world to describe the feeling we all feel of being left out, left behind, and just plain not able to keep up.

It’s not much better today, either. SDNs threaten to overturn the way we build control planes, white boxes threaten to upend the way we view vendor relationships, virtualization threatens to radically alter the way we think about the relationship between services and the network, and cloud computing promises just to make the entire swatch of network engineers redundant. It’s enough to make a reasonable engineer ask some rather hard questions, like whether it’s better to flip burgers or move into management (because the world always needs more managers). Some of this is healthy change, of course — we need to spend more time thinking about why we’re doing what we’re doing, and the competition of the cloud Continue reading

Worth Reading: Eggs and Baskets

In another time, people would have cautioned strongly against relying on a single supplier for your critical IT needs. On the web, that’s thrown out the window. —via the register

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Worth Reading: Outsourcing Security

That is not to say, however, that outsourcing has no downsides. In the area of IT security, in particular, the potential threat of data mishandling and breaches have tempered many companies’ willingness to invest all-out in outsourcing IT security. That fear is legitimate, but it’s not something that can’t be dealt with. -via infosec buddy

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Greenland

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Worth Reading: Revisiting Internet Governance

The realpoltik is that in addition to all of its other aspects — such as its social and economic elements — the internet has become a weapon in the arsenal of the military and security forces. Of course, we all knew that this was the case but the abovementioned affairs brought this out into the open, and I think even the most militant opponents of internet governance were shocked by the extent to which these agencies were already using the internet and the other technologies it facilitates, such as data-gathering and data analytics. -via circleid

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Worth Reading: Fake Reviews

More than half of the adults in Britain, around 25 million people, use online review websites such as Amazon, Tripadvisor, Expedia and Checkatrade to find the best deals. But their impressions are “distorted” by the growth of a “clandestine” market for fake reviews… via connecting

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