AUDIO – rule 11 reader: Recent Episodes
Russ White
We network engineers often find ourselves without a viable plan–our plans always seem to go awry, to the point that many network engineers just give up on planning. Is “giving up” the right solution? Or can we learn to be better planners? Jonathan Adams and Tim McConnaughy join Russ to discussion planning for network engineers.
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-283.mp3download
On this episode of the Hedge, Anil Varanasi joins Russ to talk about the complexities of network operations and what Meter is doing in this space.
note: even though this is a more product-heavy episode of the Hedge than usual, it is not sponsored
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Multicloud is all the rage — but is this always an intentional state of affairs, or do companies just “fall into” multicloud? Security in multicloud and certifications round out this episode of the Hedge, where we are joined by Joe Cozzupoli. You can get in touch with Joe through twitter at @jcozzupo24150.
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-004.mp3
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What is the relationship between blockchain technologies and network engineering? Is blockchain “just another application,” or are there implications for naming, performance, and connectivity? Austin Federa joins Tom and Russ to discuss the intersection of blockchain and networks.
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When you think of careers in network engineering, you probably think of being a console jockey, racking and stacking and configuring boxes. There is, however, much larger than just these things. Ethan Banks joins Eyvonne and Russ to talk about the broader world of careers in network engineering.
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Returning to a thread here at the Hedge, Rick Graziani joins Tom and Russ to discuss a college professor’s perspective on why network engineers should learn the theory, and not just the configuration.
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-279.mp3download
“Advocate for yourself!” What does this mean, and how can you do it? Alexis Bertholf joins Tom and Russ to discuss practical strategies to advocate for yourself.
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From time to time, I like to dive into the archive and find a show that’s worth repeating. Forthwith, Derrick Winkworth and automation.
Network automation efforts tend to focus on building and maintaining configurations–but is this the right place to be putting our automation efforts? Derick Winkworth joins Tom Ammon and Russ White at the Hedge for a conversation about what engineers really do, and what this means for automation.
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-003.mp3
What is the relationship between humans and machines? Do we adapt to machines, or do we adapt machines to humans? Does technology drive culture, or does our culture drive our technology? Join Mark Prosser, Eyvonne, Tom, and Russ as they discuss what a sociotechnical system is and how it impacts our lives.
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Requests for proposals (RFPs) are a little understood part of running a network–or any other IT system. What are some common mistakes, and some things engineers should think about, when building and executing RFPs? Andreas Taudte joins Tom and Russ to discuss RFPs.
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-276.mp3download
What is Jevon’s Paradox? Tom, Eyvonne, and Russ discuss how this famous paradox impact network engineering.
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What is DNS Delegation and what is it used for? What is new in the Delegation world, and what impact does it have on DNS security and operations? George Michaelson joins Tom Ammon and Russ White for a discussion about DNS DELEG in this episode of the Hedge.
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-274.mp3download
Many of us old timers (and a lot of young timers) worry about the future of networking. What if the future isn’t a technology, or even AI, but a change in focus? Mike Bushong joins Tom and Russ to argue for operations as the future of networking.
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Are you stressed? Everyone in IT seems to be continuously stressed–but what can we do about it? Sonia Cuff joins the Hedge to talk about stress.
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From time to time we like to repost episodes of significance–this week we’re reposting episode 1.
Is the CLI the best way to configure, manage, and troubleshoot routers and other networking gear? Or should we move past the CLI towards automation and (possibly even) GUI-based tools? Mark Posser joins Russ and Tom to discuss on this episode of the Hedge.
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-272.mp3
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For more reading on this topic, please check out this post by Chris Grundemann.
AI chatbots and image creators are all the rage right now–we are using them for everything from coding to writing books to creating short movies. One question we do not ask often enough, though, is how this impact human creators. How will these tools shape creativity and thinking skills?
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-271.mp3download
Password hygiene drives IT professionals crazy–people forget their passwords, will not change them often enough, and choose weak ones. But are IT folks immune to these problems? What is the psychology behind passwords, and how do we do better? Karl Buhl joins Tom and Russ to talk about passwords.
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-270.mp3
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Yes, we took an (unintentional) three-week break for medical reasons … but we’re back with a new episode.
What is Web 3.0, and how is it different from Web 2.0? What about XR, AI, and Quantum, and their relationship to Web 3.0? Jamie Schwartz joins Tom Ammon and Russ White to try to get to a solid definition of what Web 3.0 and how it impacts the future of the Internet.
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-269.mp3download
One of the “great fears” advancing AI unlocks is that most of our jobs can, and will, be replaced by various forms of AI. Join us on this episode of the Hedge as Jonathan Mast at White Beard Strategies, Tom Ammon, and Russ White discuss whether we are likely to see a net loss, gain, or wash in jobs as companies deploy LLMS, and other potential up- and down-sides.
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Solving technology problems often involves breaking a problem into multiple smaller problems, build interaction surfaces between the pieces, and glue the pieces back into a larger system. We also know every technology problem is actually a people problem–whether in the past, the present, or the future.
Given these two points, can we say something like: “If technology and people problems are interchangeable, we should be able to solve people problems the way we solve technology problems–via modularization?”
Join us as Tom, Eyvonne, and Russ discuss how this might–or might not–apply to the real world. The second trend we’re discussing on this episode of the Hedge is the apparent movement towards government telling data center operators to “bring your own power.”
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-267.mp3download
When most people think of segment routing (SR), they think of SRv6–using IPv6 addresses as segment IDs, and breaking the least significant /64 to create microsids for service differentiation. This is not, however, the only way to implement and deploy SR. The alternative is SR using MPLS labels, or SR/MPLS. Hemant Sharma joins Tom Ammon and Russ White to discuss SR/MPLS, why operators might choose MPLS over IPv6 SIDs, and other topics related to SR/MPLS.
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-266.mp3download
You can find Hermant’s recent book on SR/MPLS here.
Out of band management networks were once more common than they are today. Should we go back to building out of band management networks? Should out of band management networks be virtual or physical? How can we sell out of band management networks to the folks paying the bills? Daryll Swer joins Tom Ammon and Russ White to discuss the importance of OOB management.
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-265.mp3download
On this episode of the Hedge, Eyvonne, Tom, and Russ talk about topics near and dear to every network engineer’s heart–documentation, legacy, and tech debt. What should our philosophy of documentation be? What are legacy, end of life, and tech debt, really?
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-264.mp3download
How do Non-Fungible Tokens, or NFTs, impact value and the future of all things digital? How are they different from–and similar to–blockchain? Jaime Schwarz joins Russ White and Tom Ammon to talk about what NFTs are, how they work, and how they might impact the future.
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-263.mp3
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Many providers count on detection in the global routing table to discover and counter BGP route hijacks. What if there were a kind of BGP hijack that cannot be detected using current mechanisms? Henry Birge-Lee joins Tom Ammon and Russ White to discuss a kind of stealthy BGP attack that avoids normal detection, and how we can resolve these attacks.
To find out more, check this RIPE video.
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-262.mp3
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In the United States, the National Telecommunications and Infrastructure Administration manages spectrum and researches the current state of Internet connectivity for policy makers. Henning Schulzrinne joins Tom and Russ to discuss the role of the NTIA, spectrum management, and broadband management.
You can read the NTIA’s reports here.
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-261.mp3
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Trends in the global BGP table–the Default Free Zone (DFZ) table–can tell us a lot about the state of the global Internet. Is the Internet growing? Is IPv6 growing, or are we still in a world of “all things IPv4?” Geoff Huston joins Tom Ammon and Russ White to review the state of the routing table from 2024.
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-260.mp3
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We often try to “institutionalize” things that work into repeatable processes—and most of the time, it doesn’t work. The process ends up becoming unwieldy, eventually failing to prevent failures and stifling innovation. How can we get out of this rut? Differentiating between architecture and process. Far too many IT shops try to replace architecture with process. Our second topic for this episode is the destructive lies of the tool trope. Tools are not “neutral,” they impact the way we think and work. A primary example of a tool that can often reshape our thinking and doing in very negative ways is … the process.
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-259.mp3download
We often think of network automation as a configuration tool, but automation can also be used for one-off, integration, and even continuous testing. Dan Wade joins Tom Ammon and Russ White to talk about pyATS and the concept of automated testing. To find out more about pyATS, check here.
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-258.mp3download
Richard Wexelblat published an article in 1980 titled: “The consequences of one’s first programming language.” We’ve all seen C code written like Python, or Python code written like C, so it’s obvious a coder’s first language has a long lasting effect on their style. What about network engineers? Are there times and places where the first of anything a network engineers encounters has a long lasting impact on the way they think and work? In this roundtable, Tom, Eyvonne, and Russ consider different ways this might apply to network engineering.
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-256.mp3download
One of the various attack surfaces in encryption is insuring the certificates used to share the initial set of private keys are not somehow replaced by an attacker. In systems where a single server or source is used to get the initial certificates, however, it is fairly easy for an attacker to hijack the certificate distribution process.
Henry Birge-Lee joins us on this episode of the Hedge to talk about extensions to existing certificate systems where a certificate is pulled from more than one source. You can find his article here.
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-255.mp3download
One of the big questions about IPv6 is: “Should you use /64’s for subnets?” Tom Coffeen joins Eyvonne Sharp, Rick Graziani, and Russ as we discuss the various questions surrounding IPv6 addressing, planning, waste, and … should you /64?
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-254.mp3download
In this episode of the Hedge, Eyvonne, Tom, and Russ talk about whether Intel will survive, centralization and industrial spying, and why you need to go touch grass and read a book.
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-253.mp3download
Internet Exchange Points (IXPs) are one of the key centers of Internet infrastructure. How do IXPs work together to build this critical infrastructure? Through ICP associations, such as the African IXP Association. Ricardo Simba joins Tom Ammon and Russ White to talk about a recent meeting of the African IXP Association.
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-252.mp3
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What impact do local regulations have on our ability to build and operate new data centers in the United States? What impact do these regulations have on local economies? Juan Londoño, from the Taxpayers Protection Alliance, joins Ned Bellavance and Russ White to discuss yet another part of the network engineering world.
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-251.mp3download
It’s roundtable time! Tom, Eyvonne, and Russ discuss several different topics, including the broader market implications for the changes going on at Broadcom and VMWare, balancing the cloud (they float!), reacting to the hype, and whether IP addresses will even be important in ten years.
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-250.mp3download
Alistair Woodman joins Tom and Russ to talk about the current state of the FR Routing open source routing stack project. Like all software projects, FR Routing has entered a bit of a “middle phase,” with a focus on maintenance and stability rather than new features and protocols.
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Do you procrastinate too much? I know I do. Why do we procrastinate, and what strategies can we use to stop it? Terry Kim joins Eyvonne Sharp and Russ White to consider procrastination.
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SONiC has been around for a while–is there a solid commercial play for this open-source operating system? If so, what is it? What is the future for open-source and other network operating systems? Mike Bushong joins Tom Ammon, Eyvonne Sharp, and Russ White to discuss SONiC and open source network operating systems.
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In this roundtable episode of the Hedge, Tom, Eyvonne, and Russ discuss complexity and deployment. Why do some protocols fail to deploy, or require decades, while others deploy quickly?
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-246.mp3download
RADIUS is one of those protocols we tend to forget about because it is ubiquitous–but authentication protocols are very large attack surfaces network engineers should pay more attention to. Alan DeKok joins Tom Ammon and Russ White to discuss the RADIUS protocol.
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-245.mp3download
What are the requirements for running AI workloads over a data center fabric? Why is InfiniBand so popular for building AI networks? What about Ethernet for AI? Jeff Tantsura joins Tom Ammon and Russ White to discuss networks for AI workloads.
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The cellular network world is similar enough to the IP networking world to feel familiar, but different enough to require learning new terms and ideas. Tom Nadeau joins Tom Ammon and Russ White to discuss one element of this networking world, the RAN network, and the current move towards open source and white box disaggregated solutions.
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In the early days of computer programming, some thought there was a difference between a coder and a programmer. Did this division ever really exist, and are there similar divisions in network engineering?
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When Starlink first went into service we heard a lot of stories about how its Internet service was slow and unreliable. We’re a few years into Starlink launching satellites–how is Starlink holding up? Is service improving? Geoff Huston joins Tom, Eyvonne, and Russ to look into Starlink’s performance today.
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-241.mp3download
Many network operators think the idea of building rather than buying is something that’s out of reach–but is it? Join Steve Dodd, Eyvonne, Tom, and Russ as we discuss the positive and negative aspects of build versus buy, what operators get wrong, and what operators don’t often expect.
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There are (at least) three different aspects of AI in network engineering: network design to support AI, AI for development, and AI for operations. J.P. Vassuer joins Tom Ammon and Russ White to discuss AI for understanding and operating networks. What are the possibilities? What are the pitfalls? What can we expect to see?
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-239.mp3download
The massive failure resulting from a failed update to 8.5 million Windows hosts by Crowdstrike will live in Internet history for years to come. The failure will be studied by engineering teams and college classes to understand what went wrong and how we can stop this from happening in the future. Derick Winkworth (@cloudtoad), Eyvonne Sharp, Tom Ammon, and Russ White hang out at the hedge to talk about what happened and lessons learned from a network engineering perspective.
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-238.mp3
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Looking at changes in the market in the last ten years, it certainly seems like vendors work less toward innovation and more towards locking customers in to revenue streams. Chris Emerick, Dave Taht, and Russ White decided it’s time to talk about. What’s wrong with vendors? And since everything can’t be wrong with vendors, where are they doing the right thing?
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Eyvonne and Russ catch up with Greg Ferro one last time to talk about the permissionless Internet–a thing of the past–vendor lock in, and many other random topics on this episode of the Hedge. Greg–here’s to a grand time in the future. We’ll miss you.
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-236.mp3download
Join us as Tom, Eyvonne, and Russ hang out for another roundtable. We start the show talking about Tom’s plant (is it real or … ??). What does copyright have to do with Internet Service Providers? Should the two topics be related at all? What can the IETF do about Internet centralization?
Thanks for listening—and please reach out if you have a topic you’d like to hear about, or a guest you’d like to hear.
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-235.mp3download
We often hear about how there simply aren’t enough tech people out there–especially in cybersecurity. Rex Booth, CISO at Sailpoint, joins Tom and Russ to discuss the problem, and why we should be looking in unconventional places to find the right people.
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-234.mp3download
Data centers turn large amounts of electricity into heat. Is it possible to recover even some part of this heat rather than throwing it off into the local environment? David Krebs of masterresource.org brings his vast experience with using heat from engines to bear on the problem to propose solutions.
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-233.mp3download
If you’ve ever wondered what the process of creating and publishing a book is like, listen in as Aninda joins Tom and Russ to discuss the trials and rewards of publishing his first book, Deploying Juniper Data Centers with EVPN VXLAN.
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-232.mp3
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We often think of decoupling, or modularization in network engineering speak, as a primary tool for scaling networks, but it also one of the best tools network engineers have to increase security. In this roundtable, Eyvonne, Tom, and Russ discuss an article by Bruce Schneier on decoupling, and how it applies to networking engineering.
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-231.mp3
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You will probably be laid off at least once in your career–we no longer live a world of “permanent positions,” or even a world where people are in complete control of their “work destiny.” It’s important, then, to prepare to be laid off, made redundant, or impacted by a RIF, today. Mike Bushong joins Eyvonne Sharp, Tom Ammon, and Russ White in a wide-ranging discussion about preparing to be laid off.
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What is QUIC? Where did it come from? Why has it been successfully deployed where so many other protocols have either taken forever or flat-out failed? George Michaelson (of APNIC fame) joins Tom Ammon and Russ White on this episode of the Hedge to (quickly) talk about QUIC.
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-229.mp3download
Miscommunication between techies and business leaders are often caused by misunderstanding. Listen in as Eyvonne, Tom, and Russ discuss these misunderstandings and how we can address them.
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Europe and the United States are completely different landscapes of Internet service providers. Which provides better service for customers, and which direction should these different markets go? Luke Kehoe joins Tom Ammon, Eyvonne Sharp, and Russ White to discuss the European market specifically, and why the European market needs consolidation.
Luke’s article on this topic is here.
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-227.mp3download
Alexis Bertholf joins Tom Ammon and Russ White to discuss how we can make network engineering cool again—and to talk about how we got into network engineering.
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-226.mp3download
Is Open Source Software (OSS) a market failure? What does OSS add to the market that cannot be accomplished in other ways? What happened to the F (Free)? Join us for this roundtable episode of the Hedge.
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-224.mp3download
Listen in as Geoff Huston, Tom, and Russ discuss how the IETF, governments, and political movements interact when creating standards and guiding the future of the Internet.
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-223.mp3download
Eric Chou joins Tom and Russ to talk about the importance of creating content, and the many tools and ideas you can use to get out there and publish. You’ve heard us talk about this a lot–now it’s time to get out there and publish.
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-222.mp3download
A lot of people are spending time thinking about how to make transport and control plane protocols more energy efficient. Is this effort worth it? What amount of power are we really like to save, and what downside potential is there in changing protocols to save energy? George Michaelson joins us from Australia to discuss energy awareness in protocols.
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-221.mp3download
Cloud services are all the rage right now, but are they worth it? There are many aspects to the question, and the answer is almost always going to be “it depends.” Do you really need to spin up capacity more quickly than you can buy hardware and get it running? Do you really need to be able to spin capacity down without leaving any hardware behind? Is cloud really the best use of your team’s time and talent?
David Heinemeier Hansson joins Tom and Russ to talk about the economics and uses of cloud, and why his company has moved away from public cloud services.
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-220.mp3download
We’ve been talking about many of the same things in networking since the late 1980s–autonomous, self-driving, autonomic, etc.–and yet … those things all still seem like some sort of Jetson’s cartoon episode. Why aren’t we there yet? Are these even the right goals?
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Most providers will only accept a /24 or shorter IPv4 route because routers have always had limited amounts of forwarding table space. In fact, many hardware and software IPv4 forwarding implementations are optimized for a /24 or shorter prefix length. Justin Wilson joins Tom Ammon and Russ White to discuss why the DFZ might need to be expanded to longer prefix lengths, and the tradeoffs involved in doing so.
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We hear a lot about BGP security incidents–but what is really going on? How often do these happen, and how much damage do they do? Doug Madory, who monitors these things for Kentik, joins Russ White and Tom Ammon to talk about BGP security in the wild.
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-218.mp3download
One thing we often hear about automation is that its hard because there are so many different interfaces. On this episode of the Hedge, Daniel Teycheney joins Ethan Banks and Russ White to discuss how they started from a simple idea and ended up building an automation system that does cross vendor boundaries within a larger discussion about automation and APIs.
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-216.mp3download
Reading people from the past can sometimes show us where today’s blind spots are–but sometimes we can just find the blind spots of the people who lived then. In this episode of the Hedge, Tom, Eyvonne, and Russ finish going through a selection of quotes from an engineering book published in 1911. This time, we find there are some things to agree with, but also some to disagree with.
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-215.mp3
Network operators increasingly rely on generic hosts, rather than specialized routers (appliances) to forward traffic. Much of the performance on hosts relies on offloading packets switching and processing to specialized hardware on the network interface card. In this episode of the Hedge, Krzysztof Wróbel and Maciej Rabęda join Russ and Tom to talk about hardware offloading.
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/kedge-214.mp3download
You can find out more about hardware offloading here.
Network configuration analysis has always been the domain of commercial-grade software. Batfish changes all that with an open source, community-supported tool that can find errors and guarantees the correctness of planned or current network configurations. Ratul Mahajan joins Tom Ammon and Russ White to talk about this new tool, its capabilities, and the importance of network configuration analysis.
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-213.mp3
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You can find out more about Batfish at the project home page, and in this paper by Ratul.
How many times have you heard you should “shift left” in the last few years? What does “shift left” even mean? Even if it had meaning once, does it still have any meaning today? Should we abandon the concept, or just the term? Listen in as Chris Romeo joins Tom Ammon and Russ White to talk about the origin, meaning, and modern uselessness of the term “shift left.”
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-212.mp3
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How much have you thought about the way you learn–or how to effectively teach beginners? There is a surprising amount of research into how humans learn, and how best to create material to teach them. In this roundtable episode, Tom, Eyvonne, and Russ discuss a recent paper from the Communications of the ACM, 10 Things Software Developers Should Learn about Learning.
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-211.mp3
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transcript (machine generated)
Have you ever thought about publishing a book or recording a professional video? It’s not as simple as proposing an idea, doing the work, and becoming famous (or infamous, as the case might be). Eric Chou joins Rick Graziani and Russ to talk about the ins and outs of technical publishing. We are planning a part 2 of this in a few months to cover things we left on the table for later discussion.
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-210.mp3download
machine-generated transcript
User interface design is notoriously bad for networking gear–but why, and what can we do about it? Frank Seesink joins Tom and Russ to talk about user interface stupidity.
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-209.mp3download
The Internet of Things (IoT) has been brewing for many years–but how do all these new devices impact your network? Are there new concepts and architectures you need to learn to get a handle on IoT? Jasbir Singh, author of a new book on IoT architecture, joins Tom and Russ for this episode of the Hedge.
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-208.mp3download
What does it mean to be a network engineer in today’s world of information technology? Phil Gervasi joins Tom and Russ to discuss the ins and outs of network engineering, and what it’s really like to be in this small corner of information technology today.
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-207.mp3
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As we reach the end of what has been a hard two-year stretch for what seems like the entire world, Ethan Banks joins Tom, Eyvonne, and Russ to talk about the importance of taking care of yourself. In the midst of radical changes, you can apply self-discipline to make your little part of the world a better place by keeping yourself sane, fit, and well-rested.
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-206.mp3download
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For this month’s roundtable, Eyvonne, Tom, and I return to Addresses to Engineering Students by Harrington and Waddell. This book, published in 1912, is a “product of its time,” and hence deserves some trigger warnings. But it is also interesting to see how advice given to engineering students over 100 years ago holds up for today. Have engineering challenges, and the engineering life, changed all that much? What kinds of advice stand the test of time, what kinds do not?
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-205.mp3download
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Terry Slattery joins Tom and Russ to continue the conversation on network automation—and why networks are not as automated as they should be. This is part one of a two-part series; the first part of this conversation was posted as episode 203.
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-204.mp3download
rough transcript
Terry Slattery joins Tom and Russ to continue the conversation on network automation—and why networks are not as automated as they should be. This is part one of a two-part series; the second part will be published in two weeks as Hedge episode 204.
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-203.mp3download
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How is the Internet governed? Who sets the rules for the Internet, civil society, and government control? How much input should techies have, and how much should government control things? These are questions we don’t often ask, and yet are crucial to building and operating networks connected to the global Internet. George Michaelson joins Toms and Russ to talk about Internet governance—including contrary views of where things should be versus where they are.
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-202.mp3download
It’s time to gather round the hedge and discuss whatever Eyvonne, Tom, and Russ find interesting! In this episode we discuss business logic vulnerabilities, and how we often forget to think outside the box to understand the attack surfaces that matter. We also discuss upcoming network speed increases like Wi-Fi 7 and 800G Ethernet. Do we really need these speeds, or are we just getting caught up in a hype cycle?
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-201.mp3download
We’ve been on a long streak of discussions about automation, why it works, why it isn’t working, and what the networking industry can do about it. For this episode, we’re joined by the indubitable Ethan Banks. If you don’t think there’s anything left to say, you’ve not yet listened to Ethan!
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-200.mp3download
Automation is a big topic–folks had a lot of feedback on our first couple of Hedge episodes on the topic. We return to automation in this episode of the Hedge with Carl Buchmann to discuss one effort at unifying automation with humble beginnings.
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-199.mp3download
Automation is a bit of theme recently on the Hedge. In this episode we’re joined by Wim Henderickx to talk about the Linux Foundation Nephio project, which adapts Kubernetes management into a cloud native network management platform. This new take on managing networks is definitely discovering.
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-198.mp3download
It’s time for the October Roundtable! This month Eyvonne, Tom, and Russ are reading quotes from an engineering book published in 1911 and reacting to them. How much has engineering changed? How much has engineering stayed the same? How well can advice from a hundred years ago apply to modern engineering problems and life? It turns out that, in spite of their faults, there is a lot of great wisdom in these old books.
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-197.mp3download
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Ethernet is the technology used to move most of the world’s data at the physical layer. What has been going on for the last few years in Ethernet, and what is coming? Peter Jones joins Tom Ammon and Russ White to talk about current and future work in Ethernet, AI, and other odds and ends.
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-196.mp3download
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Year after year network engineering media, vendors, and influencers talk about the importance of network automation—and yet according to surveys, most network operators still have not automated their network operations. In this episode of the Hedge, part 2 of 2, Chris Grundemann and Scott Robohn join the Hedge to give their ideas on why network automation isn’t happening, and how we can resolve the many blockers to automation.
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-194.mp3
Year after year network engineering media, vendors, and influencers talk about the importance of network automaion—and yet according to surveys, most network operators still have not automated their network operations. In this episode of the Hedge, part 1 of 2, Chris Grundemann and Scott Robohn join the Hedge to give their ideas on why network automation isn’t happening, and how we can resolve the many blockers to automation. https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-193.mp3download To find out more about the Network Automation Forum and their upcoming meeting, check out their web site.
Addiction and addiction recovery are not a "normal" Hedge topic, but addiction afflicts many people in Information Technology. We're all "hard driven" types, who feel failure keenly, and we tend to spend more time working than is probably healthy for us. Brett Lovins has been through addiction and recovery, and joins Tom Ammon, Russ White, and Eyvonne Sharp to talk about this high impact topic.
While power is crucial for data centers, it's also something network engineers don't talk about a lot. In this episode of the Hedge, Sarah Martin from HED Design joins us to talk about the history, current state, and future of power in data centers.
What impact would Electromagnetic Pulses (EMP) from a large-scale sunspot have in the modern world? One this episode of the Hedge, Ulrich Speidel and Jaap Akkerhuis join George Michaelson and Russ White to discuss space weather and its impact on communication systems. Note this is a joint episode with Ping, APNIC's podcast. Because this is a joint recording, the format is a little different than normal.
When network engineers think of a data center, we think of fabrics and routers and switches. There is a lot more to a data center, though—there is power, building construction, environmentals, and a lot of others. What possible jobs are out there in the data center space for people who want to work in IT, but don't either want to code or build networks? Carrie Goetz, author of Jumpstart Your Career in Data Centers joins Tom Ammon and Russ White to tell us about a few, and about the importance of other careers in the data center.
It's the last show of the month, which means it is time for a roundtable! Today we are discussing three news stories, including Amazon's Sidewalk Labs, a court case in California involving Cisco and the Great Firewall of China, and yet another data breach.
Buffer bloat causes permanent delay at multiple points along the path between a server and client—but it is hard to measure and resolve. Bjørn Teigen joins Tom and Russ on this episode of the Hedge to discuss the problem, solutions based in routers, and research into how to solve the problem at the host. You can find Bjørn's recent paper in this area here, and he blogs here.
The idea of a root of trust is somewhat foreign to network engineers—what is it, and why would it be important? Michael and Marcus from Hedgehog join Tom Ammon and Russ White to discuss how hardware roots of trust work, what problems they are designed to solve for network hardware, and the current state of this technology.
Computers only have a history stretching back some 60 or 70 years—and yet much of that history has already been lost in this mist of time. Are we focusing so deeply on the future that we have forgotten our past? What might we learn from the past, even the recent past, and how does forgetting our past impact the future. Federico Lucifredi joins Tom Ammon and Russ White to discuss some of his projects finding, repairing, and operating old personal computers.
It's roundtable time at the Hedge! This month, Tom, Eyvonne, and Russ kick off the conversation talking about the value (and some dangers) of open source software. Fake Agile is up next—what does it really mean to be agile, and can organizations use agile tools without being truly agile? Finally, cloud computing, vendors, and skills come to the fore.
What's next for network engineering? While we normally think of answers to this question in terms of technology, Mike Bushong joins this episode of the Hedge to argue the future is in operations—and operational excellence. Join Mike, Tom, and Russ as we discuss how the importance of operating a network is impacting the design of hardware, software, and networks.
The Internet has become very centralized in the last five to ten years, causing a lot of concern among among many in the Internet community. While we cannot turn back the clock, we can try to chart a path forward to reduce the tendency towards centralization. Join Dirk Dirk Kutscher, Lixia Zhang, Alvaro Retana, Tom Ammon, and Russ White on this episode of the Hedge as we discuss the work the Distributed Internet Research Group (DINRG) is doing to create a more decentralized Internet.
It’s time for Eyvonne, Tom, and Russ to talk about some current stories in the world of networking—the May roundtable. Yes, I know it’s already June, and I’m a day late, but … This month we talk about the IT worker shortage, Infiniband, and the “next big thing.”
So draw up a place to sit and hang out with us as we chat.
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-181.mp3download
What has been happening in the world of network automation—and more to the point, what is coming in the future? Josh Stephens from Backbox joins Tom Ammon, Eyvonne Sharp, and Russ White to discuss the current and future network operations and automation landscape.
You can read Backbox’s report on network automation here.
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-180.mp3download
SONiC is a long-standing open source network operating system. While it cannot (quite) compete with a full-blown commercial network operating system, SONiC+FR/R can solve a lot of the problems network operators face today. Mike V Dvorkin joins Tom Ammon and Russ White to talk about the current state and future of SONiC.
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-179.mp3download
The Internet of Things is still “out there”—operators and individuals are deploying millions of Internet connected devices every year. IoT, however, poses some serious security challenges. Devices can be taken over as botnets for DDoS attacks, attackers can take over appliances, etc. While previous security attempts have all focused on increasing password security and keeping things updated, Kathleen Nichols is working on a new solution—defined trust transport in limited domains.
Join us for this episode of the Hedge with Kathleen to talk about the problems of trusted transport, the work she’s putting in to finding solutions, and potential use cases beyond IoT.
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-178.mp3download
You can find Kathleen at Pollere, LLC, and her slides on DeftT here.
On this episode of the Hedge, Mike Dvorkin joins Russ White to talk about the cloud, tradeoffs, rethinking the cloud value proposition, and the road to becoming an architect. A key point—it is harder to fix hardware in production than it is to fix software in production.
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-177.mp3download
It’s time for the April Hedge roundtable! This month Eyvonne, Russ, and Tom are talking about OpenAI, the hype around AI, the “pause letter” and the lack of a real conversation, and the rising costs of building and operating a data center. As always, let us know if you have topics you’d like to hear us talk about, or guests you’d like to hear.
Thanks for listening!
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-176.mp3download
When the economy starts contracting, career advisors start talking about the importance of “soft skills.” What are “soft skills,” exactly—and why are they “soft?” Mike Bushong joins Tom Amman and Russ White to talk about why these skills are important, why they are not “soft,” and how we should talk about people skills instead. They are superpowers,” and there isn’t anything “soft” about them.
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-175.mp3
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The Cisco Certified Design Expert (CCDE) exam was launched in 2007, but not many people know what the main objectives of the certification were at the time. Who better to enlighten us on some of the thought process and reasons behind the exam being created than one of the original development team? In this podcast, we are extremely humbled to be joined by networking industry legend, Russ White who spoke about his career, how he got into networking and some insights on the CCDE concept and how it came to fruition in the early 2000s!
ChatGPT has broken through the hype barrier and brought AI hype to the larger world. But what does AI mean to network engineers? We’ve talked about AI driven network management for years, and commercial products abound, but what does it really mean to move from the automation driven configuration to AI driven decision-making? Javier Antich joins Tom Ammon and Russ White for this episode of the Hedge to talk about cloud AI for network engineers.
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-174.mp3download
You can learn more about cloud AI in Javier’s new book.
Multicast hasn’t ever really “gone viral” (In modern terms!) throughout the Internet—in fact, it’s not widely used even in networks supporting enterprises. why not? Join Dirk Trossen, Russ White, and Tom Ammon as we discuss the many facets of multicast, and what the future holds.
Dirk’s paper on multicast can be found here.
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-173.mp3download
It’s roundtable time at the Hedge! Eyvonne Sharp, Tom Ammon, and I start the conversation talking about the SONiC open source NOS, and then wander into using open source, build versus buy, and finally complexity in design and deployment.
Thanks for listening–if you have an idea for a Hedge episode, would like to be a guest, or know someone you think would be a good guest, let one us know!
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-172.mp3
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Middleboxes are used in modern networking to sniff out attack traffic (IDS), block unwanted traffic (stateful packet filters), and share load among several different servers. Encryption, however, is making it hard for the middleboxes to do their job. Paul Grubb joins Tom Ammon and Russ White to discuss zero knowledge middle boxes, which allow operators to enforce arbitrary policies on the underlying traffic of an encrypted connection without decrypting it.
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-171.mp3download
To find out more about Paul’s work in this and other areas, please see Paul’s research page, this article on zero-knowledge middleboxes, and this research paper on zero knowledge middle boxes.
Artificial Intelligence is being heavily hyped right now, especially in light of the newer generative AI systems (like ChapGPT). What is the reality behind the hype? Jonathan Bartlett, fellow at the Discovery Institute, joins us for a discussion on AI reality for this episode of the Hedge.
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-170.mp3download
Network Address translation is one of those phrases that strikes fear into the hearts of some network engineers … and joy into the hearts of others! Steinn Bjarnarson joins us to discuss the history of NAT, its uses, its misuses, and how NAT fits into the big picture of network design today. Steinn just finished writing a paper on the history of NAT.
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-169.mp3download
It’s roundtable time! In February’s roundtable, Eyvonne joins Tom and Russ to talk about Network as a Service, innovation, and marketing. Then we jump into the topic of the year at this point—ChaptGPT. Finally, we talk about proposals to eliminate noncompete agreements in the United States. What would this mean? Would it be better for tech, or worse?
As always, you can listen to the show on just about any podcatcher, you can listen right here, or you can download the show to listen later.
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-168.mp3download
DNS over HTTPS, or DoH, is designed to protect the end user’s DNS queries from last mile providers—but recursive servers (or resolvers) also have full access to what a user is asking for. How can users preserve their privacy against data collection at recursive servers? ODoH provides one answer. Listen in as Tom Ammon, Chris Wood, and Russ White discuss how ODoH works, and what this means for user privacy.
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-167.mp3download
DNS over HTTPS, or DoH, is designed to protect the end user’s DNS queries from last mile providers—but recursive servers (or resolvers) also have full access to what a user is asking for. How can users preserve their privacy against data collection at recursive servers? ODoH provides one answer. Listen in as Tom Ammon, Chris Wood, and Russ White discuss how ODoH works, and what this means for user privacy.
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-166.mp3download
Have you ever wondered about Starlink and similar Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite systems? How are they different from geosynchronous satellites? What about the delay of sending traffic through satellites? And the future of satellites? Join Tom Ammon, Dan York, and Russ White as we discuss the ins and outs of satellite technologies.
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-165.mp3download
For this week’s episode of the Hedge, Tom Ammon and Russ White are joined by Chris Romeo to talk about the importance of the human element in threat modeling. If you’ve ever wondered about the importance of threat modeling or how to get started in threat modeling, this episode will guide you on your way.
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-164.mp3download
It’s one of those episodes where Tom, Eyvonne, and Russ just sit around and talk about the news of the day. We cover three topics in this show. The first is Netops, automation, and where this is all going. The second is on the FCC mapping process and the reality of broadband in the US. The third—perhaps a little controversial—is about IT work habits, innovation, and adding value.
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-163.mp3download
Encrypt everything! Now! We don’t often do well with absolutes like this in the engineering world–we tend to focus on “get it down,” and not to think very much about the side effects or unintended consequences. What are the unintended consequences of encrypting all traffic all the time? Geoff Huston joins Tom Ammon and Russ White to discuss the problems with going dark.
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-162.mp3download
Encrypt everything! Now! We don’t often do well with absolutes like this in the engineering world–we tend to focus on “get it down,” and not to think very much about the side effects or unintended consequences. What are the unintended consequences of encrypting all traffic all the time? Geoff Huston joins Tom Ammon and Russ White to discuss the problems with going dark.
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-161.mp3download
Cloud might seem shiny and new—but that’s just the way it looks on the outside. Most cloud services are still built on decades old technology, from networking to file access. Avishai Ish-Shalom joins Tom Ammon and Russ White to discuss the impact of changes in hardware on the design of operating systems, and think through how things will need to change to continue the drive for more performance.
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-160.mp3download
original article on USENIX here
In this last episode of 2022, Tom, Eyvonne, and Russ sit around and talk about some interesting things going on in the world of network engineering. We start with a short discussion about SONiC, which we intend to build at least one full episode about sometime in 2023. We also discuss state and antipatterns, and finally the idea of acquiring another company to build network resilience.
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-159.mp3download
DDoS attacks continue to be a persistent threat to organizations of all sizes and in all markets. Roland Dobbins joins Tom Ammon and Russ White to discuss current trends in DDoS attacks, including the increasing scope and scale, as well as the shifting methods used by attackers.
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-158.mp3download
Vendor lock-in has been an issue in networking for the entire time I’ve been working in the field—since the late 1980s. I well remember the arguments over POSIX compliance, SQL middleware standards, ADA, and packet formats. It was an issue in electronics, which is where I worked before falling into a career in computer networks, too. What does “vendor independence” really mean, and what are the ways network operators can come close to having it? Frank Seesink joins Russ White and Tom Ammon to rant about—and consider—solutions to this problem.
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-157.mp3download
The Hedge December update contains information about upcoming episodes and training—listen in for the inside scoop!
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-dec22.mp3download
Modularization is a crucial part of network design because it supports interchangeability, reduces the size of failure domains, and controls security domains. One critical aspect of modularization is functional separation, which argues for separating services onto specific physical and logical resources. Kevin Myers joins Tom Ammon and Russ White on this episode of the Hedge to discuss the theory and importance of functional separation in network design.
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-156.mp3download
Network engineers normally use and support DNS as a service, but don’t tend to deploy, manage, and interact with DNS servers at an application level. For this episode of the Hedge, Andreas Taudte joins Tom Ammon and Russ White to discuss the many lessons learned from planning and deploying DNS as a service.
https://media.blubrry.com/hedge/content.blubrry.com/hedge/hedge-155.mp3download
Applications generally assume the network provides near-real-time packet transmission without regard for what the application is trying to do, what kind of traffic is being transmitted, etc. Back in the real world, its often important for the network to coordinate with applications to more efficiently carry traffic offered. The Path Aware Research Group (PANRG) in the Internet Research Task Force (IRTF) is looking at the problems involved in understanding and signaling the path characteristics to applications.
In this episode of the Hedge, Brian Trammel joins Tom Ammon and Russ White to discuss the current work on path aware networking.
November update on upcoming shows and training. My upcoming training on Safari Books Online is here.
Tom, Eyvonne, and Russ hang out at the hedge on this episode. The topics of discussion include our perception of security—does the way IT professionals treat security and privacy helpful for those who aren't involved in the IT world? Do we discourage users from taking security seriously by making it so complex and hard to use? Our second topic is whether multicloud is being oversold for the average network operator.
If you advertise routes through a provider to the global Internet, you might be wondering if you should go through the trouble of registering in the RPKI and advertising ROAs. What is the tradeoff for the work involved in what seems like a complex process? Cecelia Testart joins Jeremy White and Russ White to discuss recent work in measuring the value of the RPKI.
What's going on with the Hedge? What am I teaching this coming month? Listen to this short update to find out all the news.
Who's using the cloud? Is cheap complexity harmful? Are mainframes dead? Is this the end of specialized networking hardware? Is it a good idea to have server folks build networks? On this episode of the Hedge, Tom, Eyvonne, and Russ go "guestless" in a roundtable about various topics and ideas in the networking world.
It seems like only yesterday we started talking about the Site Reliability Engineer, and their place in the IT ecosystem. Over the last several years, the role of the SRE has changed—and it's bound to continue changing. On this episode of the Hedge, Niall Murphy joins Tom Ammon and Russ White to discuss the changing role of the SRE, and what the SRE could be.
It seems like only yesterday we started talking about the Site Reliability Engineer, and their place in the IT ecosystem. Over the last several years, the role of the SRE has changed—and it's bound to continue changing. On this episode of the Hedge, Niall Murphy joins Tom Ammon and Russ White to discuss the changing role of the SRE, and what the SRE could be.
How much of the traffic on the Internet is wasted—traffic no-one really wanted, and yet is being carried and paid for by providers and end users? In a world increasingly concerned about the waste of precious resources, this is an important topic to consider. Leslie Daigle joins Russ White and Tom Ammon on this episode of the Hedge to discuss the kinds of traffic she's seeing hit their large-scale honey-trap, and the implications for the Internet.
The software world is known for overdue projects, costs overrun, lots of defects, and lots of failure all the way around. Many other engineering fields have stricter requirements to take on projects and liability insurance driving correct practice and care. The networking world, and the larger IT world, however, has neither of these things. Does this make IT folks less likely to "do the right thing," or is the self-regulation we have today enough? Join Tom Ammon, Eyvonne Sharp, and Russ White as they discuss the possibilities of professional liability in information technology.
We don't often do a post-mortem on the development and deployment of new protocols ... but here at the Hedge we're going to brave these deep waters to discuss some of the lessons we can learn from the development and deployment of IPv6, especially as they apply to design and deployment cycles in the "average network" (if there is such at thing). Join us as James Harr, Tom Ammon, and Russ White consider the lessons we can learn from IPv6's checkered history.
Forty years ago there was an implied loyalty between companies and employees—but that world is long gone. As much as companies would like their employees to be loyal, layoff culture has crept into every corner of the modern world, especially as we move into an economic downturn. Giovanni Messina joins Russ White and Tom Ammon to talk about being prepared to be laid off, including such topics as being financially prepared, building skills for the long term, and finding community.
IPv6 is still being deployed, years after the first world IPv6 day, even more years after its first acceptance as an Internet standard by the IETF. What is taking so long? George Michaelson (APNIC) joins Tom Ammon and Russ White on this episode of the Hedge to discuss the current pace of IPv6 deployment, where there are wins, and why things might be moving more slowly in other areas.
Wide area networks in large-scale cores tend to be performance choke-points—partially because of differentials between the traffic they're receiving from data center fabrics, campuses, and other sources, and the availability of outbound bandwidth, and partially because these routers tend to be a focal point for policy implementation. Rachee Singh joins Tom Ammon, Jeff Tantsura, and Russ White to discuss "Shoofly, a tool for provisioning wide-area backbones that bypasses routers by keeping traffic in the optical domain for as long as possible."
Regional Internet Registries (RIRs) assign and manage numbered Internet resources like IPv4 address space, IPv6 address, and AS numbers. If you ever try to get address space or an AS number, though, it might seem like the policies the RIRs use to determine what kin and scale of resources you can get are a bit arbitrary (or even, perhaps, odd). Aftab Siddiqui joins Russ White and Tom Ammon to explain how and why these policies are set the way they are.
There is a rising concern about the security of open source projects—particularly in terms of open source software supply chain. Alistair Woodman, who works closely with multiple open source software projects, joins Tom and Russ to discuss the reality of securing open source projects. The final answer? Essentially, buyer—or in the case of open source software, user—beware.
Most network engineers take it as a "given" that the robustness principle is the "right way" to build protocols and networks—"be conservative in what you send, and liberal in what you receive." The idea behind the robustness principle is that implementations should implement specifications as accurately as possible, but they should also accept malformed and otherwise erroneous data, process the best they can, and drop the bits they cannot process. This should allow the network to operate correctly in the face of defects and other failures. A recent draft, draft-iab-protocol-maintenance/, challenges the assumptions behind the robustness principle. Join Tom and Russ as they discuss the robustness principle and its potential problems.
Zero-day defects exist in every projects, whether they are open or closed source. John Fraizer and Alistair Woodman join Tom Ammon and Russ White to discuss an old defect John found in the FRR code, the history of this defect, and the problems inherent in finding and resolving defects in large, diverse code bases.
IPv6's designers built the concept of Unique Local Addresses, or ULAs, into the addressing architecture to make network address translation unnecessary for IPv6 deployments. As with many other plans of mice and men, however, the unintended consequences of what is a good idea tend to get in the way. Nick Buraglio joing Eyvonne Sharp, Tom Ammon, and Russ White to discuss the many problems of IPv6 ULA, why it isn't practical in most network deployments, and the larger question of how standards bodies sometimes fail to consider the unintended consequences of a good idea.
Over the last several years various Chinese actors (telecom operators and vendors) have been pushing for modifications to IPv6 to support real-time applications and other use cases. Simon Sharwood wrote an article over at the Register on their efforts and goals. While this effort began with big IP, moved into new IP, and has been called many other names. These efforts are being put forward in various venues like the IETF, the ITU, etc. Simon Sharwood, who writes for the Register, joins Tom Ammon and Russ White to discuss these efforts.
One of the many reasons engineers should work for a vendor, consulting company, or someone other than a single network operator at some point in their career is to develop a larger view of network operations. What are common ways of doing things? What are uncommon ways? In what ways is every network broken? Over time, if you see enough networks, you start seeing common themes and ideas. Just like history, networks might not always be the same, but the problems we all encounter often rhyme. Ken Celenza joins Tom Ammon, Eyvonne Sharp, and Russ White to discuss these common traits—ten things I know about your network.
Multi-factor testing is one of the most important jobs a vendor takes on—and one of the most underrated. Testing across all possible configurations and use cases is nearly impossible. Brooks Westbrook joins Tom Ammon and Russ White on this episode of the Hedge to talk about the complexity of multi-factor testing and some of the consequences of that complexity.
We all intuitively know the DNS is complex—and becoming more complex over time. Describing just how complex, however, is difficult. Siva Kesava and Ryan Beckett just published a research paper taking on the task of describing DNS complexity, particularly in light of the new DNAME record type. It turns out its complex enough that you can no longer really validate zone files.
One of the mainstays of scripting—and now network management—are increasingly focused on making things "easier" for the human operator. Does this focus on making things "easier" for the operator produce a better experience, though? Or does it create frustration as humans try to "outguess" the computer's programming and process? Join Tom Ammon and Russ White as they discuss the problems with scripting, automation, and ease-of-use.
Inventories are generally hard, and hence don't tend to be where you'd like to spend your time. The importance of having a good inventory, however, can hardly be overstated. Malcom Booden joins Tom Ammon and Russ White to talk about the importance of inventories and inventory ideas.
Mentoring is a topic we return to time and again—because it's one of the most important things we can talk about in terms of building your people skills, your knowledge, and your career. On this episode of the Hedge, Guedis Cardenas joins Tom Ammon and Russ White to talk about open source mentoring. We discuss how this is different than "regular" mentoring, and how it's the same. Join us as we talk about one of the most important career and personal growth things you can do.
A short update on upcoming classes and episodes of the Hedge for May, as well an update on what I'm working on and other places where I'm publishing material.
Have you ever thought about getting a college degree in computer networking? What are the tradeoffs between this and getting a certification? What is the state of network engineering at colleges—what do current students in network engineering programs think about their programs, and what they wish was there that isn't? Rick Graziani joins Tom Ammon and Russ White in a broad ranging discussion on network engineering and college. Rick teaches network engineering full time in the Valley.
The FR Routing project is a fully featured open-source routing stack, including BGP, OSPF, and IS-Is (among others), supported by a community including NVDIA, Orange, VMWare, and many others. On today's episode of the Hedge, Tom Ammon and Russ White are joined by Donald Sharp, Alistair Woodman, and Quentin Young to update listeners on projects completed and underway in FR Routing.
ISDN, while an old technology, is still around in many parts of the world. When will it go away? George Michaelson joins Tom Ammon and Russ White to discuss the end of ISDN. The conversation then veers into old networking technologies, and the importance of ISDN in setting the terms and ideas we use today—ISDN is one of the key technologies around which network engineers built their mental maps of how to build and maintain networks.
DC fabric design is more of an art than a science—a lot of factors come into play, such as future growth, lifecycle management, security, and costs. How can network engineers balance these various factors—how do they even know what questions to ask? Brooks Westrbook joins Tom Ammon and Russ White to discuss three- and five-stage DC fabric design, OPEX, CAPEX, and other topics on this episode of the Hedge.
Another year of massive growth in the number and speed of connections to the global Internet—what is the impact on the global routing table? Goeff Huston joins Donald Sharp and Russ White to discuss the current state of the BGP table, the changes in the last several years, where things might go, and what all of this means. This is part two of a two-part episode.
Another year of massive growth in the number and speed of connections to the global Internet—what is the impact on the global routing table? Goeff Huston joins Donald Sharp and Russ White to discuss the current state of the BGP table, the changes in the last several years, where things might go, and what all of this means. This is part one of a two-part episode.
What is the Internet Architecture Board (IAB) of the IETF? What role does the IAB play in the larger ecosystem of building and deploying standard protocols? In this episode of the Hedge, Tom and Ethan "flip roles" with Russ to ask these questions.
Can computation be drawn into the network, rather than always being pushed to the edge of the network? Taking content distribution networks as a starting point, the COIN research group is looking at ways to make networks more content and computationally aware, bringing compute into the network itself. Join Alvaro Retana, Marie-Jose Montpetit, and Russ White, as we discuss the ongoing research around computing in the network.
In today's Internet, packets are at the core of information flows. Routers only know (very minimally) about what is in the packets they're carrying around. Caching and content distribution networks (CDNs) are used to place information at various locations throughout the 'net for users to access, making the distribution of this information more efficient. Information Centric Networking "flips the script," making named information, rather than packets, the core construct of networks.
Marketing is an underappreciated (and even demonized) part of the process in creating and managing networking products. Cathy Gadecki of Juniper joins Russ White and Tom Ammon on this episode of the Hedge to fill in the background and discuss the importance of marketing, and some of the odd corners where marketing impacts product development.
When vendors build something new—or when you decide to go a different direction in your network—you have to figure out how to integrate these new things. Integration of this type often includes cultural, as well as technical, changes. William Collins joins Tom Ammon and Russ White to discuss his experience in integrating new technologies on Hedge 118.
Continuing our series on how vendors build networking products, Mike Bushong joins this episode of the Hedge to discuss the overall process, the importance of the product manager, and the importance of managing and selling change. Join Tom Ammon, Eyvonne, and Russ White as we discuss how vendors build products.
Jack Schofield, a prolific journalist covering computers and computing, developed three "laws" across his thirty years of reporting that have come to be known as Schofield's Laws of Computing. What are these laws, and how do they apply to the modern computing landscape—especially for the network engineer? Join Tom Ammon and Russ White as they discuss Schofield's Laws of Computing.
Devops is the new normal—but, far too often, operations folks (like network engineers) are expected to become full-on developers, and developers are expected to understand operations in ways they never had to before. Mat Duggan joins Tom Ammon and Russ White to discuss why operations is not development IT
Hardware hacking isn't a topic most network engineers are familiar with—but we always used to say that if I can get access to the console of a router, I can eventually get into the box. The same is largely true of all kinds of computing hardware, including laptops, compute nodes connected to a data center fabric, and, again, routers and switches. In this episode of the Hedge, Federico Lucifredi joins Tom Ammon and Russ White to discuss the many options hardware hackers have today.
Over the last few episodes of the Hedge, we've been talking to folks involved in bringing network products to market. In this episode, Tom Ammon and Russ White talk to Jeff Jakab about the role of the Product Line Manager in helping bring new networking products to life. Join us to understand the roles various people play in the vendor side of the world—both so you can understand the range of roles network engineers can play at a vendor, and so you can better understand how products are designed, developed, and deployed.
The Technical Marketing role is often misunderstood—or simply forgotten—in the vendor world. What does the TME do, and why? What value does the TME bring to the development and release of new products? Pete Lumbis joins Tom Ammon and Russ White to discuss the importance and value of the TME.
Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are all the rage in the network engineering world. Where might these technologies be useful, as opposed to mere hype? The two most obvious areas where AI and ML would be useful are failure reaction and security. Micah Mussler joins Tom Ammon and Russ White to discuss the possibilities of using AI and/or ML in the broader security market—and focusing in on the network.
SRv6, a form of source routing, is the new and interesting method being created by the IETF to allow traffic engineering and traffic steering. This is not the first time the networking world has tried source routing, however—and in the spirit of rule 11, we should ask some questions. How and why did source routing fail last time? Have we learned those lessons and changed the way we're doing things to overcome those limitations? Security seems to be one area where problems arise in the source routing paradigm.
What is the "core" of the DNS system, and how has it changed across the years? Edward Lewis joins Tom Ammon and Russ White to discuss his research into what the "core" of the domain name system is and how it has changed—including the rise of the large cloud players to the core of the default free zone.
Engineers (and marketing folks) love new technology. Watching an engineer learn or unwrap some new technology is like watching a dog chase a squirrel—the point is not to catch the squirrel, it's just that the chase is really fun. Join Andrew Wertkin (from BlueCat Networks), Tom Ammon, and Russ White as we discuss the importance of simple, boring technologies, and moderating our love of the new.
Whether you're just starting in your technology career, or you're an old hand who likes to go back to basics and understand how to move forward in your career, this episode of the Hedge is for you. Terry Slattery joins Tom Ammon and Russ White to discuss the things you can do to build a successful career as in the world of network engineering.
One topic of constant discussion among network engineers is the basic problems surrounding network modeling, which leads to configuration, telemetry, and troubleshooting. In this episode of the Hedge, Ryan Beckett, Tom Ammon, and Russ White discuss Zen, a general framework for compositional network modelling.
Many service providers have the feeling that they "didn't do anything wrong, but somehow we still lost." How are providers reacting to the massive changes in the networking field, and how are they trying to regain their footing so they can move into the coming decades better positioned to compete? Join Johan Gustawsson, Tom Ammon, and Russ White as we discuss the impact of merchant silicon and changing applications on the architecture of service providers.
Automation is often put forward as the answer to all our problems—but without a map, how can we be certain we are moving in the right direction? David Gee joins Tom Ammon and Russ White on this episode of the Hedge to talk about automata without a map. Where did we come from, what are we doing with automation right now, and what do we need to do to map out a truly better future?
Our community has been talking about BGP security for over 20 years. While MANRS and the RPKI have made some headway in securing BGP, the process of deciding on a method to provide at least the information providers need to make more rational decisions about the validity of individual routes is still ongoing. Geoff Huston joins Alvaro, Russ, and Tom to discuss how we got here and whether we will learn from our mistakes.
Our community has been talking about BGP security for over 20 years. While MANRS and the RPKI have made some headway in securing BGP, the process of deciding on a method to provide at least the information providers need to make more rational decisions about the validity of individual routes is still ongoing. Geoff Huston joins Alvaro, Russ, and Tom to discuss how we got here and whether we will learn from our mistakes.
Understanding the flow of a packet is difficult in modern networks, particularly data center fabrics with their wide fanout and high ECMP counts. At the same time, solving this problem is becoming increasingly important as quality of experience becomes the dominant measure of the network. A number of vendor-specific solutions are being developed to solve this problem. In this episode of the Hedge, Frank Brockners and Shwetha Bhandari join Alvaro Retana and Russ White to discuss the in-situ OAM work currently in progress in the IPPM Wg of the IETF.
Most network engineers don't spend a lot of time thinking about their supply chain—you must call your favorite vendor, order, and a few weeks later the hardware shows up on your loading dock. It's not so simple any more. If you disaggregate, you need to manage your software and hardware supply chains separately. You need to think about security in your supply chain—is that software package backdoored? Moving to the cloud might seem to solve these problems, but they don't. Even virtual networks have physical limits.