SDxE: Engineer Focused

As an engineer, you’ve probably asked yourself a thousand times—what does all this software defined stuff mean for me? Answers are out there, of course; it seems like everyone is writing about it. Some of the answers out there are even useful, of course, but some of them are not. Most folks writing about the software defined craze are either unrealistic, or they’re focused on the large scale network you probably aren’t working on. Which leaves the question lingering: how does software defined apply to me?

SDxE—Software Defined Enterprise—is a new show designed to answer those questions for the engineer. I’ll be there; the full schedule isn’t in place, but I am currently pulling together a panel about the end of the (appliance) router. I plan to have folks from Cumulus, 6Wind, and at least one independent expert (Jeff Tantsura), sitting down to chat with me about disaggregation and the future of the router market. Specifically, are the tools in place that will allow you, the average engineer, running the “average” “enterprise” network, to take advantage of disaggregation?

Shawn Zandi will be there discussing the LinkedIn data center, and Pete Lumbis will be there talking about network automation. Continue reading

Worth Reading: Python 3.6 released

The coding community got a nice bonus gift under our collective Christmas tree on December 23, 2016, when the Python Software Foundation released the latest version of the language, Python 3.6. While the rest of us were busy snagging cocktail snacks at the office holiday party, Continuum Analytics maker of Anaconda, the leading open source data science platform for the Python programming language — was busy issuing their own matching release. —New Stack

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Worth Reading: Constructing your CCDE practical exam strategy

I passed the CCDE practical in November 2016 along with some of the finest engineers I know, from whom which I’ve learned a few things that I wanted to share with you. This two-part blog series is meant to be a descriptive (not prescriptive) enumeration of the different study strategies and tools you’ll have at your disposal. These strategies are not often discussed but are important in achieving the CCDE. Specifically, this first blog discusses the study strategy component. —Cisco Learning Network

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Blogging Workflow

A lot of folks start out to blog, and then quit soon after. Since I started blogging mainly as a way to build some discipline in my writing, I was determined not to let my blog become a cob web, a page that was not updated on a regular basis, I started blogging determined to build a process, or a blogging workflow. I should emphasize at this point that blogging, as all writing, is a habit and a discipline. It’s not just “something that happens on its own.” If you are going to blog, start with the same mindset—focus on the habits and discipline first, the blog second.

I (mostly) build all the content for ‘net Work on Saturday mornings. Sometimes it slips to Sunday or Monday, depending on what is going on, but I normally spend no more than about 2 to 3 hours a week on keeping this blog up and running, including normal maintenance. There are times when I spend much more—for instance, if I’m switching platforms, or switching themes. There are other times when I need to spend time in code, or researching something specific, for a blog post (or a set of posts), but Continue reading

Worth Reading: how to wade through 100’s of articles

Know why you read. Ignore content that doesn’t align with your personal consumption goals. Ignore content with clickbait titles. These articles are purposely designed to drive traffic, generating salable ad impressions. Most of the time, they are content-free and safely ignored. Have no fear of declaring amnesty. Missing out doesn’t matter. Read it now; you probably won’t read it later. Don’t let articles pile up for when you have a better time. Use tools effectively. You can get through content more quickly and share or save the best stuff easily. —Ethan Banks

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Moving to a Single Domain

For various reasons, I’m changing my DNS provider; the new provider will not support the .guru TLD, so I’m going to drop it, and just stick with rule11.us. I think most folks are pointing to rule11.us anyway, but I thought I’d post this here so you’d see if it not.

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Moving to a Single Domain

For various reasons, I’m changing my DNS provider; the new provider will not support the .guru TLD, so I’m going to drop it, and just stick with rule11.us. I think most folks are pointing to rule11.us anyway, but I thought I’d post this here so you’d see if it not.

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Cisco Live Berlin

I will be speaking at the CCDE Techtorial at Cisco Live in Berlin February 20-24 (just a few short weeks away)! Come by and hang out, or meet Elaine and I for lunch on Tuesday to talk about the CCDE.

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Cisco Live Berlin

I will be speaking at the CCDE Techtorial at Cisco Live in Berlin February 20-24 (just a few short weeks away)! Come by and hang out, or meet Elaine and I for lunch on Tuesday to talk about the CCDE.

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Large Scale Network Design

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Large Scale Network Design

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Worth Reading: Tier 1 carrier performance report

As Noction continues to intelligently optimize routing for more and more networks around the world, we find ourselves in the unique position of having great insights into the general Internet performance as well as the performance of specific Internet carriers, when analyzing data collected by IRP Lite instances. Around 200 million successful probes performed by IRP instances over the previous weeks offered us plenty of data for analysis. The current report card covers the performance of major providers within the continental United States. —Noction

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Worth Reading: Tier 1 carrier performance report

As Noction continues to intelligently optimize routing for more and more networks around the world, we find ourselves in the unique position of having great insights into the general Internet performance as well as the performance of specific Internet carriers, when analyzing data collected by IRP Lite instances. Around 200 million successful probes performed by IRP instances over the previous weeks offered us plenty of data for analysis. The current report card covers the performance of major providers within the continental United States. —Noction

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Roof Charms in Seoul

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Roof Charms in Seoul

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Worth Reading: Class breaks

There’s a concept from computer security known as a class break. It’s a particular security vulnerability that breaks not just one system, but an entire class of systems. Examples might be a vulnerability in a particular operating system that allows an attacker to take remote control of every computer that runs on that system’s software. Or a vulnerability in Internet-enabled digital video recorders and webcams that allow an attacker to recruit those devices into a massive botnet. —Schneier on Security

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Worth Reading: Class breaks

There’s a concept from computer security known as a class break. It’s a particular security vulnerability that breaks not just one system, but an entire class of systems. Examples might be a vulnerability in a particular operating system that allows an attacker to take remote control of every computer that runs on that system’s software. Or a vulnerability in Internet-enabled digital video recorders and webcams that allow an attacker to recruit those devices into a massive botnet. —Schneier on Security

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Worth Reading: Elements and principles of graphic design

Knowing the key basics of design will help you to create better, more aesthetically pleasing works of art. When creating a design, there are both elements and principles to pay attention to. Knowing both pieces of the puzzle and how to successfully incorporate them into your designs will help you to create more beautiful pieces. —Line25

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Worth Reading: Elements and principles of graphic design

Knowing the key basics of design will help you to create better, more aesthetically pleasing works of art. When creating a design, there are both elements and principles to pay attention to. Knowing both pieces of the puzzle and how to successfully incorporate them into your designs will help you to create more beautiful pieces. —Line25

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Worth Reading: Let’s encrypt with DANE

If you looked at the realm of security, and X.509 certificate-based secure systems, we appear to be in the worst of all worlds: it can be expensive, inherently compromisable and slow to set up and access. So somehow, we’ve managed to achieve “Security: Poor, Slow and Expensive!”. However, this environment is changing, and it may no longer be the case. In this post, I’d like to walk through the process of setting up good, inexpensive and accessible security using several public tools. —APNIC

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