Russ’ Rules of Network Design
We have the twelve truths of networking, and possibly Akin’s Laws, but is there a set of rules for network design? I couldn’t find one, so I decided to create one, containing 18 laws I’ve listed below.
Russ’ Rules of Network Design
- If you haven’t found the tradeoffs, you haven’t looked hard enough.
- Design is an iterative process. You probably need one more iteration than you’ve done to get it right.
- A design isn’t finished when everything needed is added, it’s finished when everything possible is taken away.
- Good design isn’t making it work, it’s making it fail gracefully.
- Effective, elegant, efficient. All other orders are incorrect.
- Don’t fix blame; fix problems.
- Local and global optimization are mutually exclusive.
- Reducing state always reduces optimization someplace.
- Reducing state always creates interaction surfaces; shallow and narrow interaction surfaces are better than deep and broad ones.
- The easiest place to improve or screw up a design is at the interaction surfaces.
- The optimum is almost always in the middle someplace; eschew extremes.
- Sometimes its just better to start over.
- There are a handful of right solutions; there is an infinite array of wrong ones.
- You are not immensely smarter than anyone else in Continue reading
Troubleshooting Webinar this Friday
I’m teaching my troubleshooting webinar this Friday. I’ve revamped the slides entirely, so this will likely be a big change for anyone who’s attended previous versions of this. Three hours, 109 slides, and interaction through the chat window … all to develop some really good skills in how to troubleshoot. For those who are curious, I was taught formal troubleshooting skills in my early life in electronics, learning my lessons on ILS, RADAR, and radio systems of various kinds. This webinar is my adaptation of those skills for network engineers.
What’s your Digital Dilemma?
There are many ways to describe the need for IT organizations to do things better. There are multiple opportunities to get it wrong. Certainly, compromising today in the name of tomorrow is what many IT leaders now call the digital dilemma. Derek Britton of Micro Focus offers the vendor perspective.Back-to-Office Canceled: The New Phase of IT Spending
As we hit IT budget season for 2022, many organizations are delaying their back-to-the-office plans. Here's what that will mean for CIO IT spending priorities next year.Blessay: Enterprise DevOps is about Hiring More People
The hidden secret of DevOps is headcount justification
Response: Survey Reveals Talent Shortages as Biggest Barrier to Emerging Technologies Adoption
Lack of training not lack of talent
Stateful Switchover (SSO) 101
Stateful Switchover (SSO) is another seemingly awesome technology that can help you implement high availability when facing a broken non-redundant network design. Here’s how it’s supposed to work:
- A network device runs two copies of the control plane (primary and backup);
- Primary control plane continuously synchronizes its state with the backup control plane;
- When the primary control plane crashes, the backup control plane already has all the required state and is ready to take over in moments.
Delighted? You might be disappointed once you start digging into the details.
Stateful Switchover (SSO) 101
Stateful Switchover (SSO) is another seemingly awesome technology that can help you implement high availability when facing a broken non-redundant network design. Here’s how it’s supposed to work:
- A network device runs two copies of the control plane (primary and backup);
- Primary control plane continuously synchronizes its state with the backup control plane;
- When the primary control plane crashes, the backup control plane already has all the required state and is ready to take over in moments.
Delighted? You might be disappointed once you start digging into the details.
Lucky Webapp Add Select2 dropdowns
In this post I will cover the process of adding searchable dropdown boxes to your Lucky webapp with the Select2 Javascript library and styling them with Bootstrap 5. Software The following software versions were used in this post. Lucky - 0.28.0 Select2 - 4.1.0-rc.0 Bootstrap -...continue reading
Network Break 350: Intel Pledges Billions For European Chip Factories; Facebook Reveals New Data Center Design
This week's Network Break podcast wonders what Intel wants in return for a multi-year, multi-billion pledge to build European chip factories, marvels at Facebook's newly revealed data center designs, analyzes Comcast's Masergy acquisition, and more.
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