Architect or Designer?
Are you an architect or designer? What’s the difference? A reader asked this last week in email — my (probably) less than perfect response.
First, we have to dispense with this objection — network people aren’t “architects” in the first place. Nor are they “engineers.” Okay, so… A challenge: what else would you call someone who designs and builds things? When someone says, “You’re not a real architect, because you don’t build buildings, and you’re not held responsible for your work,” I tend to reply, “Why are you talking to me if I don’t exist?”
I’ve probably spent a lot more time than most people thinking about what the difference between design and architecture is, as it was a major issue when the CCDE and CCAr were split into two certifications (long ugly story — but then again, whenever marketing is involved, it normally is). With the help of some psychos (psychometricians, actually, but saying you worked with psychos for seven years to develop certification just sounds cooler somehow), we came up with some differentiators that I think are useful.
The difference is in focus, not task — the designer focuses on a solution to a narrower engineering problem, Continue reading
Bing Translator
I’ve rearranged the slideout sidebar a little; tightened up the text a little so more will fit (I might customize the styling a little to make it even tighter). I also added a bing translator widget; slide out the bar, press the translate button, and a small floating popup will appear. Click down to choose a language to translate to. I don’t know how good the translation is, but I thought this might be useful.
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Worth Reading 06:04
It’s been a bit of a crazy week — out to SFO, where I saw a lot of old friends, for NANOG. I picked up the top shirt on my pile this morning, and discovered it’s an old NANOG shirt, SFO in 2004 (!). The good news is the NANOG folks get their videos on line really fast — and all of them are worth watching. The channel is here, but I’d like to especially point out the talks on active monitoring, QUIC, and OpenConnect. Yes, my presentation is there, too.
One point to remember is that as the “network guy,” you stand between people and their funny cat videos. While people get mad about plumbing, they seem to get irate about their network access — because it’s all virtual it all seems so easy, I guess. It doesn’t help that the modern face of IT tends to be large companies that have a virtual monopoly and totally horrible customer service. But whatever the reason, it means you have to be extra careful not to step on people’s toes when you’re doing network engineering — the perception doesn’t have to be reality to impact your life.
escape from reality
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IT/IT: Resume Building
It’s a discussion in meeting rooms, boardrooms, hotel conference rooms, and post-conference cocktail parties: Why isn’t IT working? Ask anyone in a corporate or government job and you’ll get an earful. As I was writing this book, I’d occasionally throw the question out to friends, clients, and beleaguered airplane seatmates. The responses come fast and furious. They don’t speak our language. They’re too focused on resume building and tinkering, not on driving business value.
The New IT
This single quote describes much of the circuit of the world for an engineer. If I spend my time on driving business value, then I’m appreciated by my current employer — at least until they change systems, anyway, and throw me out on my ear because my skills aren’t “current.” If I spend my time keeping my skills current, so I can add business value, well, I’m not driving current business value, and hence I’m “isolated,” a “tinker in the corner,” who doesn’t understand nor care about the “real problems facing the business.”
What’s the solution? A little “bump in the training budget” isn’t going to fix this. Rather, this is going to take restructuring the way IT thinks about business, Continue reading
Oak Island
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The right tool for the job
This last weekend I set a toilet, replaced five faucets, and put together the beginnings of a workbench. No, I’ve not resorted to working in “the trades,” to make a living — I’ve been slowly but surely finishing and refashioning our “country house” to better accommodate the time we spend “in the country.” One of the faucets, and the toilet, were set in a new bathroom; the pipes had been stubbed up but not finished — which means there were no valves. After the adventure of finding the main water cutoff for the house (it’s buried under about three inches of dirt along one side of the foundation), I had to cut off the plugs and install valves.
The pipes in the country house are PEX. So are the pipes in the house we just moved from. In fact, so are the pipes in the house in Raleigh we just moved to. Odd thing, that — three houses, in different places, at different price levels, and they all use PEX piping. In fact, walking through some random retail store last week, I noticed they had PEX stub outs in a bathroom there, too.
Imagine walking into an apartment and Continue reading
Worth Reading 05:29
This week hasn’t been so much about IT as it has about installing faucets and workbenches… A bit of a crazy week. But I promise I won’t post links about plumbing for you to read. Well, maybe just network plumbing.
I’m speaking at NANOG this coming week. If you’re in the San Fransisco area, you should come by the conference — it’s some of the best industry insight and information you’re going to get from any conference or show, anywhere. And it’s small enough you can actually meet everyone there over the course of the sessions, and get to know folks on the provider side of the industry.
As we get faster at data processing companies “get better” at making use of real time data processing to find a way to make money. The latest seems to be code injection — described in this Infoworld article — putting popups on a web page in mid stream to sell a service, remind you to refill your minutes, or just buy something. Want to make the situation even more frightening? Change the injection in the first paragraph to an ad from a drug company popping over the conversation, rather than a reminder Continue reading
Review: The New IT
The New IT
Jill Dyche
Research has found that almost half of the CEOs described CIOs as being out of touch with the business and unable to understand how to apply IT in new ways. Over half also considered IT “a commodity service purchased as needed.”
So begins Jill Dyche in her examination of the relationship between IT and business. This statement sums up the entire point of this book: IT needs to find a way to be more engaged in the business world. Rather than just selling IT as a “commodity to be purchased,” IT leaders need to learn to show how IT can drive business value.
The author breaks the topic into three major parts — What’s Wrong with IT, Your IT Transformation Toolkit, and Leadership in the New IT. The first section, of course, outlines the litany of problems with IT in the business world today, from not having a seat at the table to being more about process and tools than actually driving business value. The second section contains a set of exercises that might (or might not — as in my case) apply to you and your role in IT leadership. These exercises involve Continue reading
Waste Not a Moment (Time Management)
One of the legends surrounding people who get a lot done is they simply don’t sleep. It’s long been said that I have some number of clones who do part of my work, or perhaps that if you ask different clones the same question, you’ll get different answers. This has, of course, been verified scientifically… But the truth is busy people do sleep, and they don’t have clones.
What they don’t do is waste the one resource everyone has a limited supply of — time. In the British Navy of yore, there was a phrase for this focus on using time effectively:
Waste not a moment.
Now I’m not here to give you time management tips and tricks. I’m happy enough to tell you what I do that seems to work. For instance —
- Set aside specific times to check email; don’t check it constantly.
- Schedule time to read and learn every day; still, however, slip in reading while you’re waiting in line, waiting on dinner by yourself, etc.
- Don’t spend a lot of time on social media. Don’t read the comments to a story, just the story.
- Don’t feel guilty about deleting things, or not reading them.
- Corollary one: Continue reading
Memorial Day 2015
For those who do not know, today, in the United States we hold a day of memory — Memorial Day — for those who have fallen in the defense of the freedom of our Nation. This is different from Veteran’s day, a day which honors those who either are or have served in the US Military, in that it is focused on those who have died in the actual service of the United States — in the course of duty, as it is often said. From the original Presidential proclamation —
On this Memorial Day, as we honor the memory of brave men who have borne our colors in war, we pray to God for His mercy. We pray for the wisdom to find a way to end this struggle of nation against nation, of brother against brother. We pray that soon we may begin to build the only true memorial to man’s valor in war–a sane and hopeful environment for the generations to Come.
As a veteran myself (9 years in the USAF), I find this day to be one of sadness and remembrance. My Grandfather died in the service, as have many of my other relatives, and almost Continue reading
Worth Reading — 0522
It’s Friday, which means it’s time to talk about some stuff around the ‘web that’s worth reading.
If you’ve not been asleep this week (most people seem to be, given the rate at which my emails are being answered!), then you’ve probably heard about logjam — a man in the middle attack against IKE and other DHE cypher suites. If you haven’t this is a really short (and cryptic) explanation of the attack, and how to mitigate it.
Bufferbloat has been in the news recently, with speedtest and other tools building in the ability to measure bufferbloat in DSL and cable connections. Buffers have always been a topic of hot discussion in the networking world — in fact, buffer size came up just this last week while in discussions in building an Ericsson reference design for data center fabric underlays. The point always comes down to this — can’t you just do better QoS and larger buffers, and skip all the 1:1 subscription rates? The answer I always give is a resounding NO!, but it’s hard to explain why without getting into an explanation of buffer bloat, and it’s effects on jitter (the often ignored step child of Continue reading
Virtualized
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Mailing List
I’m switching the updates mailing list to mailchimp so I can post emails with more “stuff” from time to time that’s not posted on the blog. The signup is under the “hamburger menu” on the top left corner.
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IT/IT: Data Can’t Lie?
A statistician is someone who can put their head in a hot oven, and their feet in a bucket of ice, and say, “on the average, I feel fine.”
Before we move completely into a world where people are counseled, “use the data, Luke,” disregarding their own beliefs and feelings, we need to have a little discussion. As an example of what we might get wrong, let’s take a look at some interesting problems in the polling from recent elections. According to one article (which happens to have all the numbers conveniently gathered in one place) —
- On May 7th, in an election in Britain, the pre-election polls showed conservatives would win around 280 seats. The exit polls during the election showed the conservatives would win around 316 seats. During the election, conservatives actually won 330 seats.
- In 1992, also in Britain, the pre-election polls showed the conservative and liberal parties in a dead heat. The conservatives actually won by 7.5 points.
- In the recent election in Israel, Likud was predicted, through polling, to win 22 seats. Likud actually won 30 seats.
These aren’t random events — they are repeated time and again in elections through the last Continue reading
BGP Security
I set up a set of slides on BGP security for some folks I know at Level 3 over the last couple of months, and then presented them to an internal Ericsson audience this week. I just posted them to Slideshare, as well —
I wrote an entire series on this same topic a while back on Packet Pushers, if you want commentary to go with the slides —
Part 1: Basic Operation
Part 2: Protections Offered
Part 3: Replays, Timers, and Performance
Part 4: Signatures and Performance
Part 5: Leaks
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Eschew Obfuscation (Communicate Clearly)
Many years ago, I worked for a manager who had two signs on his desk. The first was a pencil with the words, “Pencil 2.0″ printed above them. The rest of the sign went on to explain how the pencil had undo (the eraser), was renewable (it can be sharpened), etc. The second sign was simpler, just two black words printed across a white background.
Eschew Obfuscation
Being just out of the US Air Force, and not having quite the vocabulary I should have (have I ever told you that reading is the key to having a great vocabulary?), I didn’t really understand the point. Now I do. Okay, to make it more obvious, from the Collins English Dictionary, 8th edition:
eschew: tr to keep clear of or abstain from (something disliked, injurious, etc.); shun; avoid
obfuscation: the act or an instance of making something obscure, dark, or difficult to understand
Now do you see? Avoid using language people can’t understand. Far too often, in the technical world, we use abbreviations, acronyms, and all sorts of cute nonsense to say things. We pepper our language with shorthands and inside jokes (squirrel!). While this sometimes helps communication, Continue reading