Computer Network Design Complexity and Tradeoffs Training

I’m teaching a “one off” special event class over on O’Reilly’s platform (via Pearson) this coming Friday, the 5th of December. From the Description:

Join networking engineer and infrastructure expert Russ White for this exclusive, one-time event exploring the critical role of tradeoffs in network design. We’ll begin by unpacking how complexity shapes the decisions architects and designers must make, and how tradeoffs are often an unavoidable part of navigating that complexity. Through real-world examples, you’ll learn how different network design choices impact overall system complexity, and how to approach these decisions with greater clarity and confidence. We’ll wrap up with an in-depth discussion of unintended consequences—how they arise, how to anticipate them, and how they relate to designing in complex, adaptive environments.

As always, if you register for the course you can watch later.

Register here.

Posted in SCHEDULE

Worth Reading 111425


An Autonomous System (AS) can protect itself against DDoS attacks by rerouting incoming DDoS traffic through a ‘DDoS scrubber’, a process that is typically implemented using the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP). While BGP-based scrubbing is a useful service, its adoption on the global Internet is unknown.


Until recently, many professionals, including many doctors, thought they needed to become more machine-like to keep their jobs. Such worry contributed to the specialization trend of the last century.


In an era of growing cyber threats, traditional defensive measures can be insufficient in the face of sophisticated or novel tactics. As a result, the question of whether private or public entities should engage in active defense or offensive “hack back” tactics has taken on greater urgency.


In this episode of PING, APNIC Chief Scientist Geoff Huston explores the complex landscape of undersea cables.


By 1990 it was clear that IP had a problem. It was still a tiny Internet at the time, but the growth patterns were exponential, doubling in size every 12 months. We were stressing out the pool of Class B IPv4 addresses and in the absence of any corrective measures this address pool would be fully depleted in 1994.

Posted in WORTH READING

Worth Reading 111225

If you’re using IP address truncation thinking it makes data “anonymous” or “non-personal,” you’re creating a false sense of security.


With distressingly typical Silicon Valley fake-it-till-you make-it bravado, LLM creators have been telling investors that artificial general intelligence (AGI) is just around the corner (or has already been achieved!). The problem the promoters blithely ignore is that LLMs do not know how the words they input and output relate to the real world.


Many organizations rushing to cut staff in the name of AI efficiency are expected to quietly rehire those roles – often “offshore or at lower salary.”


While Silicon Valley is investing tens of billions of dollars chasing the artificial general intelligence dream, academic computing research in the U.S. is facing a severe drought.


There are two competing forces in IT, and they are at play during the GenAI era as much as they have ever been during prior eras in the datacenter.

Posted in WORTH READING

Hedge 288: Loneliness

Sometimes we just like to talk about “life issues” as they relate to network engineering and technology career fields. Loneliness seems to especially plague network engineering and other “small” IT fields, where communities are small, change is rapid, and stress is high. Loneliness expert Lucy Rose joins Eyvonne, Tom, and Russ to discuss loneliness.

Check out the Cost of Loneliness here.

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Posted in AUDIO, HEDGE