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Category Archives for "Russ White"

RTGWG Interim Meeting on Data Center Challenges

Last week, the Routing Area Working Group (IETF) held an interim meeting on challenges and (potential) solutions to large scale data center fabric design. I’ve filed this here because I spoke for all of about 3 minutes out of the entire meeting—but I really wanted to highlight this meeting, as it will be of interest to just about every network engineer “out there” who deals with data center design at all.

There are three key URLs for the interim

The agenda
The session slides and links to drafts presented
A Webex recording of the entire proceedings

My reaction, in general, is that we are starting to really understand the challenges in a networking way, rather than just as a coding problem, or a “wow, that’s really big.” I’m not certain we are heading down the right path in all areas; I am becoming more convinced than ever that the true path to scale is to layer the control plane in ways we are not doing today. You can see this in the LinkedIn presentation, which Shawn and I shared. I tend to think the move towards sucking every bit of state possible out of the control plane is a Continue reading

Toxic Cultures and Reality

I have lived through multiple toxic cultures in my life. It’s easy to say, “just quit,” or “just go to HR,” but—for various reasons—these are not always a good solution. For instance, if you are in the military, “just quit” is not, precisely, an option. So how should you deal with these sorts of bad situations?

Start here: you are not going to change the culture. Just like I tell my daughters not to date guys so they can “fix” them, I have never seen anyone “fix” a culture through any sort of “mass action.” You are not going to “win” by going to the boss, or by getting someone from the outside to force everyone to change. You are not going to change the culture by griping about it. Believe me, I’ve tried all these things. They don’t (really) work.

Given these points, what can you do?

Start with a large dose of humility. First, you are probably a part of a number of toxic cultures yourself, and you probably even contribute at least some amount of the poison. Second, you are almost always limited in your power to change things; your influence, no matter how right you Continue reading