Whither Network Engineering? (Part 3)

In the previous two parts of this series, I have looked at the reasons I think the networking ecosystem is bound to change and why I think disaggregation is going to play a major role in that change. If I am right about the changes happening, what will become of network engineers? The bifurcation of knowledge, combined with the kinds of networks and companies noted in the previous posts in this series, point the way. There will, I think, be three distinct careers where the current “network engineer” currently exists on the operational side:

  1. Moving up the stack, towards business, the more management role. This will be captured primarily by the companies that operate in market verticals deep and narrow enough to survive without a strong focus on data, and hence can survive a transition to black box, fully integrated solutions. This position will largely be focused on deploying, integrating, and automating vertically integrated, vendor-driven systems and managing vendor relationships.
  2. Moving up the stack, towards software and business, the disaggregated network engineering role (I don’t have a better name for this presently). This will be in support of companies that value data to the point of focusing on its management Continue reading

Stuff The Internet Says On Scalability For January 4th, 2019

Wake up! It's HighScalability time:

 

Solar system? Nope, the beauty is in your head—neural art.

 

Do you like this sort of Stuff? Please support me on Patreon. Need cloud? Explain the Cloud Like I'm 10 (34 almost 5 star reviews).

 

  • 45%: learned scheduler improves average job completion time; 61%: apps share data with Facebook; 45,037,125: people who watched Bird Box on Netflix in first week; 32,368: color images collected by the Curiosity rover on Mars between August 2012 and November 2018; $36.1B: AI  healthcare market by 2025; 20%: object recognition failure in light rain; 350: pages in Donald Knuth's new book;  $1,000: price needed to deactivate Facebook account; $3B: Epic games profit; 1: bitcoin mined from body heat of 44,000 people; 

  • Quotable Quotes:
    • @Hannah_Chutzpah: What are the technical terms, in your field, for 'dunno'? In medicine there's 'idoeopathic' In archeology/anthropology there's 'ritual purposes' How do you professionally term 'we haven't got a clue'?
      • @peterseibel: In programming we don't have a special term for it, just like fish don't have a special term for 'water'.
    • @robn: everyone seems to want stateless services and stateless protocols but Continue reading

Because Our Future Depends On It

Esther is a youth leader passionate about gender, digital literacy, and grassroots advocacy. She is founder of the SAFIGI Outreach Foundation and President of Digital Grassroots.

She is also a 2019 IFF Community Development fellow, a 2019 Engineers Without Borders Canada Kumvana fellow, a Mozilla Open Leader, an Internet Society 2017 Youth@IGF fellow, an open knowledge advocate, and a champion for capacity building of youth and girls.

Esther graduated summa cum laude in multimedia journalism, and is a contributor on Impakter.com and Africa.com.  She is an emerging African writer, working on her debut fantasy novel and does photography in her free time.

Born in 1994, about the same time Tim Berners-Lee founded the World Wide Web Consortium and a commercialized Internet started to take form, the Internet has inextricably shaped my life and career.

At 16 years old, I got my first job at an Internet café. I had taught myself to type, and that was all I needed to teach people that they couldn’t just guess a password if they had not already set up an email account. Many young people in developing nations are still grappling to learn the computer (it’s Continue reading

io_submit: The epoll alternative you’ve never heard about

io_submit: The epoll alternative you've never heard about

My curiosity was piqued by an LWN article about IOCB_CMD_POLL - A new kernel polling interface. It discusses an addition of a new polling mechanism to Linux AIO API, which was merged in 4.18 kernel. The whole idea is rather intriguing. The author of the patch is proposing to use the Linux AIO API with things like network sockets.

Hold on. The Linux AIO is designed for, well, Asynchronous disk IO! Disk files are not the same thing as network sockets! Is it even possible to use the Linux AIO API with network sockets in the first place?

The answer turns out to be a strong YES! In this article I'll explain how to use the strengths of Linux AIO API to write better and faster network servers.

But before we start, what is Linux AIO anyway?

io_submit: The epoll alternative you've never heard about
Photo by Scott Schiller CC/BY/2.0

Introduction to Linux AIO

Linux AIO exposes asynchronous disk IO to userspace software.

Historically on Linux, all disk operations were blocking. Whether you did open(), read(), write() or fsync(), you could be sure your thread would stall if the needed data and meta-data was not ready in disk cache. This usually isn't Continue reading

Poor data-center configuration leads to severe waste problem

All of the monstrous data centers popping up globally are having multiple negative impacts on the planet, the EPA notes.First, there is the obvious effect, power consumption. Data centers account for 3 percent of the global electricity supply and consume more power than the entire United Kingdom.But beyond that is the waste caused by disposal. With Amazon and the like deploying more than a million physical servers per year globally, the old server equipment they replace have to go somewhere. The same goes for your old servers.[ Read also: Chip-cooling breakthrough will reduce data-center power costs | Get regularly scheduled insights: Sign up for Network World newsletters ] E-waste 70 percent of toxic waste The EPA estimates e-waste, disposed electronics, now accounts for 2 percent of all solid waste and 70 percent of toxic waste, thanks to the use of chemicals such as lead, mercury, cadmium and beryllium, as well as hazardous chemicals such as brominated flame retardants. A lot of that is old servers and components.To read this article in full, please click here

Poor data-center configuration leads to severe waste problem

All of the monstrous data centers popping up globally are having multiple negative impacts on the planet, the EPA notes.First, there is the obvious effect, power consumption. Data centers account for 3 percent of the global electricity supply and consume more power than the entire United Kingdom.But beyond that is the waste caused by disposal. With Amazon and the like deploying more than a million physical servers per year globally, the old server equipment they replace have to go somewhere. The same goes for your old servers.[ Read also: Chip-cooling breakthrough will reduce data-center power costs | Get regularly scheduled insights: Sign up for Network World newsletters ] E-waste 70 percent of toxic waste The EPA estimates e-waste, disposed electronics, now accounts for 2 percent of all solid waste and 70 percent of toxic waste, thanks to the use of chemicals such as lead, mercury, cadmium and beryllium, as well as hazardous chemicals such as brominated flame retardants. A lot of that is old servers and components.To read this article in full, please click here

Why does Mellanox have four potential suitors?

It looks like Microsoft is looking to give itself the gift of networking in the form of an acquisition — Mellanox. But it may have to get in line.An Israeli financial publication called TheMarker reports that Microsoft not only has an interest in acquiring the network chip maker, but it also has reportedly engaged Goldman Sachs to handle negotiations. The rumors first popped up before Christmas, and understandably there has been little activity since.But Microsoft may not be the only vendor looking to grab Mellanox. Data Centre Dynamics in the U.K. reported last month that three other firms — Xilinx, Intel, and Broadcom — could also be interested in acquiring the company. As far back as October, CNBC was reporting that Mellanox was looking for a buyer.To read this article in full, please click here

Why does Mellanox have four potential suitors?

It looks like Microsoft is looking to give itself the gift of networking in the form of an acquisition — Mellanox. But it may have to get in line.An Israeli financial publication called TheMarker reports that Microsoft not only has an interest in acquiring the network chip maker, but it also has reportedly engaged Goldman Sachs to handle negotiations. The rumors first popped up before Christmas, and understandably there has been little activity since.But Microsoft may not be the only vendor looking to grab Mellanox. Data Centre Dynamics in the U.K. reported last month that three other firms — Xilinx, Intel, and Broadcom — could also be interested in acquiring the company. As far back as October, CNBC was reporting that Mellanox was looking for a buyer.To read this article in full, please click here

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