Interviewing a Network Engineer Using a Single Scenario

I always said that the Trivia Pursuit certification tests (or job interviews) are nonsense and that one should focus on fundamentals.

In a recent blog post, Daniel Dib described a fantastic scenario: using a simple “why can’t I connect to a web site” question, explore everything from ARP/ND to DNS and TLS.

Obviously, you’ll never see anything that sane in a certification test. An interactive interview doesn’t scale (beyond CCDE), and using humans (and common sense judgment) creates potential legal liabilities (there were rumors that had been one of the reasons a talk with a proctor who could flunk you was dropped from the CCIE test).

Interviewing a Network Engineer Using a Single Scenario

I always said that the Trivia Pursuit certification tests (or job interviews) are nonsense and that one should focus on fundamentals.

In a recent blog post, Daniel Dib described a fantastic scenario: using a simple “why can’t I connect to a web site” question, explore everything from ARP/ND to DNS and TLS.

Obviously, you’ll never see anything that sane in a certification test. An interactive interview doesn’t scale (beyond CCDE), and using humans (and common sense judgment) creates potential legal liabilities (there were rumors that had been one of the reasons a talk with a proctor who could flunk you was dropped from the CCIE test).

Highscalability is Up For Sale

Hi everyone,

First, I’d like to sincerely thank everyone who has supported Highscalability over the years.

We’ve grown together through some interesting times. Massive changes have occurred in how systems are built, and my goal has always been to help people learn how to build them better. I’d like to think that goal was accomplished.

Obviously, for that last several years, things have been quiet around here. This has always been a one programmer show, and for everything, there is a season. The season for me is changing. That means http://highscalability.com is for sale.

My preference is for someone to take HS over and keep it going in some form or another. If you are a content farm, please don’t reply. I’ve never once taken payment for a post and I don’t plan on changing that now.

You get the site, the domain, and the twitter account. If you are not a scam artist and have a reasonable offer, please contact me at [email protected].

Thanks!

Automatically Transforming Git URLs

Git is one of those tools that lots of people use, but few people truly master. I’m still on my own journey of Git mastery, and still have so very far to go. However, I did take one small step forward recently with the discovery of the ability for Git to automatically rewrite remote URLs. In this post, I’ll show you how to configure Git to automatically transform the URLs of Git remotes.

The key here is the url configuration stanza and the associated insteadOf keyword. Added to your Git configuration—either globally or on a per-repository basis—these configuration options will tell Git to use a different URL every time it encounters the specified original URL.

Here’s an example:

[url "[email protected]:org/"]
    insteadOf = "https://github.com/org/"

The [email protected]:org/ is the replacement URL; that is, the URL that you want Git to use. The URL specified by the insteadOf keyword is the original URL; that is, the URL you want Git to replace. As you can see in the example, it’s possible not only to transform HTTPS-based URLs to SSH URLs (or vice versa), but it’s possible to constrain this transformation to repositories belonging to a specific organization or Continue reading

Dell, Lenovo Also Waiting For Their AI Server Waves

If the original equipment manufacturers of the world had software massive software divisions – like many of them tried to do a two decades ago as they tried to emulate IBM and then changed their minds a decade ago when they sold off their software and services businesses and pared down to pushing tin and iron – then maybe they might have been on the front edge of AI software development and maybe they would have been closer to the front of the line for GPU allocations from Nvidia and AMD. …

The post Dell, Lenovo Also Waiting For Their AI Server Waves first appeared on The Next Platform.

Dell, Lenovo Also Waiting For Their AI Server Waves was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

Calico monthly roundup: November 2023

Welcome to the Calico monthly roundup: November edition! From open source news to live events, we have exciting updates to share—let’s get into it!

 

Find your Cluster Security Score

Calico Cloud is releasing new capabilities for security posture management called Security Scoring and Recommended Actions. Start measuring and tracking your security posture.

Learn more.
Customer case study: Boundless Software

Calico Cloud enabled SOC 2 compliance for Boundless Software while also drastically reducing onboarding times for the company’s customers. Read our case study to find out how.

Read case study.
Secure Kubernetes traffic with Calico Egress gateway

Discover how egress gateways enable users to assign meaningful network identity to selected traffic so that this information can be further used by traditional tools to enforce granular policies to traffic based on identity or bandwidth.

Read blog post.

Open source news

  • NEW features
    • Streamlined Operations with Windows HostProcess Container – Automated node pool scaling and upgrades, eliminating the need for manual node initialization to streamline operations and management of Windows container-based applications.
    • Performance and Scalability with IPv6 Support for Calico eBPF Dataplane – IPv6 support for eBPF in Calico empowers enterprises to enhance the performance and scalability of their applications by alleviating Continue reading

NB459: IBM Aims To Own The Quantum Realm; Amazon Hitches A Ride With SpaceX

Today on Network Break we cover IBM's new quantum processor and modular quantum computer and its effort to own the next generation of computing. We also cover Cisco's AI assistant for firewalls, Marvell's new DPUs for networking devices, why Amazon has to rely on SpaceX to get Project Kuiper satellites into orbit, and more IT news.

The post NB459: IBM Aims To Own The Quantum Realm; Amazon Hitches A Ride With SpaceX appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Response: Vendor Network Automation Tools

Drew Conry-Murray published a excellent summary of his takeaways from the AutoCon0 event, including this one:

Most companies want vendor-supported tools that will actually help them be more efficient, reduce human error, and increase the velocity at which the network team can support new apps and services.

Yeah, that’s nothing new. Most Service Providers wanted vendors to add tons of nerd knobs to their products to adapt them to existing network designs. Obviously, it must be done for free because a vast purchase order1 is dangling in the air. We’ve seen how well that worked, yet learned nothing from that experience.

Read more …

Response: Vendor Network Automation Tools

Drew Conry-Murray published a excellent summary of his takeaways from the AutoCon0 event, including this one:

Most companies want vendor-supported tools that will actually help them be more efficient, reduce human error, and increase the velocity at which the network team can support new apps and services.

Yeah, that’s nothing new. Most Service Providers wanted vendors to add tons of nerd knobs to their products to adapt them to existing network designs. Obviously, it must be done for free because a vast purchase order1 is dangling in the air. We’ve seen how well that worked, yet learned nothing from that experience.

Read more …

OpenSpeedTest: Check the Speed of your LAN via Web Browser

Imagine you’re developing an application for your internal network that requires a certain network speed to function properly. You could open a web browser and point it to one of the many network speed tests on the market but I’m sure you know what that does… it tests your connection to the outside world. What if you’re looking to test the speed of your LAN itself? OpenSpeedTest comes in. OpenSpeedTest is a free, open source HTML5 network performance estimation tool that doesn’t require any client-side software or plugin to function. Once deployed, the tool can be accessed from a standard, modern web browser. Even better, OpenSpeedTest can be deployed with Docker. It uses a combination of NGINX and Alpine Linux to use very little resources on your Docker server. You can run OpenSpeedTest with or without

Trunk to Access – Will It Work?

Recently a posted a question to Twitter about connecting two Cisco Catalyst switches. One switch has already booted and has the following configuration:

interface GigabitEthernet0/0
 description SW02
 switchport mode trunk
 switchport trunk allowed vlan 1,10,20,30
 switchport nonegotiate

The other switch is connected to Gi1/0/48 and has just been powered on. It has no configuration so it is booting with the default configuration. The intention is to onboard a new switch via Catalyst Center using Plug and Play (PNP).

Based on the responses not many people were able to describe what would happen and why or why not this scenario would work. There are some interesting details here and before running into this scenario myself I thought that it might work. Before we can answer if it will work, let’s list what we know at this point in time about the two switches, SW01, and SW02. For SW01 we know that:

  • The port is configured as a trunk.
  • The VLANs allowed on the trunk are 1,10,20, and 30.
  • DTP has been disabled.
  • The native VLAN is 1.

For SW02 we know that:

  • It will boot with all ports enabled.
  • Those ports will be in VLAN 1.
  • DTP is enabled on the Continue reading
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