2019 Books

2019 Books

I read at least 32 books in 2019. The high count is due primarily to burning through a bunch of mediocre thriller novels on road trips, but I also read a number of really good books in diverse categories. Here are some highlights:

(Intellectual History) At the Existentialist Cafe - Sarah Bakewell

I love wide-ranging intellectual histories, and this fits that description completely. While I am not a huge fan of existentialism as a philosophical movement, its history and personalities are fascinating, and this book does justice to all of it. I particularly enjoyed the chapters about Simone de Beauvoir, Iris Murdoch, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty.

(Mystery) The Infinite Blacktop - Sara Gran

I don’t read a lot of mysteries, but Sara Gran’s Claire DeWitt series is certainly one of my all-time favorites. Detective noir with a touch of magical realism. This is the latest; I recommend reading them in order. I hope there are more to come.

(Micro History) Lady on the Beach - Norah Berg

This memoir is out of print, but worth finding if you have any interest in Pacific Northwest history. Battling alcoholism during the Great Depression, the author Continue reading

Top 5 Cybersecurity Predictions for 2020

Grab your tinfoil hat and a champagne cocktail, snuggle up in front of a warm fireplace, and check...

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Technology Short Take 122

Welcome to Technology Short Take #122! Luckily I did manage to get another Tech Short Take squeezed in for 2019, just so all my readers could have some reading materials for the holidays. I’m kidding! No, I mean I really am kidding—don’t read stuff over the holidays. Spend time with your family instead. The investment in your family will pay off in later years, trust me.

Networking

Servers/Hardware

Security

Cloud Computing/Cloud Management

‘What’s Dead May Never Die’ — SD-WAN’s Undying Story

Aviatrix CEO Steve Mullaney raised eyebrows earlier this month when he predicted the demise of the...

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Happy Holidays!

Happy Holidays!

I joined Cloudflare in July of 2019, but I've known of Cloudflare for years. I always read the blog posts and looked at the way the company was engaging with the community. I also noticed the diversity in the names of many of the blog post authors.

There are over 50 languages spoken at Cloudflare, as we have natives from many countries on our team, with different backgrounds, religions, gender and cultures. And it is this diversity that makes us a great team.

A few days ago I asked one of my colleagues how he would say "Happy Holidays!" in Arabic. When I heard him say it, I instantly got the idea of recording a video in as many languages as possible of our colleagues wishing all of you, our readers and customers, a happy winter season.

It only took one internal message for people to start responding and sending their videos to me. Some did it themselves, others flocked in a meeting room and helped each other record their greeting. It took a few days and some video editing to put together an informal video that was entirely done by the team, to wish you all the best Continue reading

Huawei Battles Reigned in 2019

Huawei struck back at a report claiming the Chinese vendor benefitted from government subsidies...

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Fast Friday- Keeping Up With The Times

We’re at the end of the 2010s. It’s almost time to start making posts about 2020 and somehow working vision or eyesight into the theme so you can look just like everyone else. But I want to look back for a moment on how much things have changed for networking in the last ten years.

It’s true that networking wasn’t too exciting for most of the 2000s. Things got faster and more complicated. Nothing really got better except the bottom lines of people pushing bigger hardware. And that’s honestly how we liked it. Because the idea that we were all special people that needed to be at the top of our game to get things done resonated with us. We weren’t just mechanics. We were the automobile designers of the future!

But if there’s something that the mobile revolution of the late 2000s taught us, it was that operators don’t need to be programmers to enjoy using technology. Likewise, enterprise users don’t need to be CCIEs or VCDXs to make things work. That’s the real secret behind all the of the advances in networking technology in the 2010s. We’re not making networking harder any more. We’re not adding complexity for Continue reading

Top 10 Money Moves of 2019 in SDxCentral’s World

Broadcom paid $10.7B for Symantec; Cisco bought Acacia Communications for $2.6B; plus 2019's...

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How Valuable Is Your Time?

The last couple of days, there have been a lot of tweets with messages like “You need to work tons of overtime in your 20’s to be successful in your career”. There have been also been plenty of counters to these tweets.

This kind of logic is seriously seriously flawed, and bad bad advice. As readers of this blog, you would know that I always talk about tradeoffs. Firstly though, let’s talk about blindly following others footsteps. If I do everything Russ White does, do I become as smart as Russ White? Of course not. If I do everything Warren Buffet does, do I become as rich? Of course not. If I do everything Ivan Pepelnjak does, will I become as experienced as him? Of course not. There are many many paths that can lead to success, whatever that is, and they are not always straight.

So, following in someone’s footsteps does not equal success. Therefore, blindly following advice about working your ass in your 20’s does not hold any real value. What about doing what successful people do? Some successful people wake up early, some do a lot of reading, some exercise a lot. Will you trying to repeat Continue reading

Who Went Where: The Top Headcount Changes of 2019

JR Rivers left Cumulus Networks for AWS; Nutanix’s Sunil Potti joined Google; plus 2019's biggest...

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Pandas for Network Engineers (Who doesn’t love Pandas? )

The module not the mammal! My original title for this article was going to be *Decomposing Pandas* as a follow on to *Decomposing Data Structures* but I was advised against that name. Go figure. One of the things I love most about Python is that its always waiting for me to get just a little READ MORE

The post Pandas for Network Engineers (Who doesn’t love Pandas? ) appeared first on The Gratuitous Arp.

Kubernetes Opportunities, Challenges Escalated in 2019

The past year was highlighted by ongoing security and commercialization challenges around business...

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Choosing SD-WAN Vendor – Have You Found the Tradeoff?

When I studied for my CCDE, I had the good fortune of receiving mentoring from Russ White. Something he taught me, that I really took to heart, is that in every design and choice you make, there is a tradeoff.

If you haven’t found the tradeoff, you haven’t looked hard enough.

From a SD-WAN perspective, in selecting your vendor of choice, what does that mean?

SD-WAN vendors, for a loose definition of SD-WAN, come mainly from three different camps:

  • Router vendor
  • Firewall vendor
  • WAN optimization vendor

There are also vendors that were born in the SD-WAN era and have no previous background.

Cisco of course, through the acquisition of Viptela, bought a company that was very strong in routing, control- and data plane design. A solution designed by Architects/Engineers with profound experience of large scale networking, from large enterprises and service providers. Viptela was born in the SD-WAN era, with no legacy platforms or products to take into consideration. With the background of Viptela, this means that this is a SD-WAN product where the main strength is on routing, separation of control- and data plane, and the flexibility of the product. Other vendors with the same background will also likely Continue reading

Broadband RF scanner

One great thing about software defined radio is that you can become less blind to the invisible world of radio waves that’s all around us. One simple thing is to do a survey of the spectrum, to see what parts are busy.

More practically you can also use this to find which Wifi channels are least busy, so that you can get optimal performance on your network. Counting the number of networks is not a good indicator, since one network may be completely unused, while another is used 24/7 to stream Netflix. And some networks are hidden anyway, making them no more secure, but more annoying.

[GNU Radio][gnuradio] has a bunch of building blocks for some interactive peeking at spectrums, but there’s still some assembly required in order to make actually useful things.

To do a survey I used a USRP B200 with a [broadband spiral antenna. If you’re only interested in the Wifi spectrum then a 2.4/5GHz antenna is a better choice.

You can probably use a cheaper SDR, but you need to make sure it sends frequency tag updates in GNU Radio, so the block knows which frequency is tuned, as it moves across the spectrum.

Overall Continue reading

Day Two Cloud 029: Kubernetes Needs To Disappear

This is a special holiday episode of Day Two Cloud with guest Kelsey Hightower, a Kubernetes evangelist and contributor. We discuss the current state of Kubernetes and the future for this orchestration platform, including how it will address networking, should you get certified, and will Kubernetes eventually fade into the background as hidden infrastructure you don't have to think about so much.

Day Two Cloud 029: Kubernetes Needs To Disappear

This is a special holiday episode of Day Two Cloud with guest Kelsey Hightower, a Kubernetes evangelist and contributor. We discuss the current state of Kubernetes and the future for this orchestration platform, including how it will address networking, should you get certified, and will Kubernetes eventually fade into the background as hidden infrastructure you don't have to think about so much.

The post Day Two Cloud 029: Kubernetes Needs To Disappear appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year 2020!

Dear friend,

The year 2019 is almost over and it is a time to sincerely thank you for the time you spend reading this blog, for all your questions, ideas and suggestions. All these things gives us inspiration to continue blogging about new things for you, dear friend!

We wish you jolly time over the holidays period with your families and friends. We wish you to achieve all your professional and personal goals in 2020! Let the year be successful for you and your loved ones!

Merry Christmas and Happy New 2020 Year!

BR, Anton

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