The Hedge 83: Bruce Davie and the System View

Network engineers tend to look at the world through the lens of a single device—an individual appliance, sold by a vendor, with a well-developed CLI for configuration and maintenance. Networks, however, are the “odd person out” in the world of information technology. In the broader technology world, a stronger systems-oriented view is more common. In this episode of the Hedge, Bruce Davie joins Tom Ammon and Russ White to discuss a systems view of the world, as well as a new publishing model he’s working on, and some thoughts on the place of SDN.

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You can find Bruce’s book, Computer Networks: A Systems Approach, here.

The Hedge 82: Jared Smith and Route Poisoning

Intentionally poisoning BGP routes in the Default-Free Zone (DFZ) would always be a bad thing, right? Actually, this is a fairly common method to steer traffic flows away from and through specific autonomous systems. How does this work, how common is it, and who does this? Jared Smith joins us on this episode of the Hedge to discuss the technique, and his research into how frequently it is used.

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The Hedge 80: Ian Goetz and 5G

Although there are varying opinions 5G—is it real? Is it really going to have extremely low latency? Does the disaggregation of software and hardware really matter? Is it really going to provide a lot more bandwidth? Are existing backhaul networks going to be able to handle the additional load? For network engineers in particular, the world of 5G is a foreign country with its own language, expectations, and ways of doing things.

On this episode of the Hedge, Ian Goetz joins Tom Ammon and Russ White to provide a basic overview of 5G, and inject some reality into the discussion.

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The Hedge 79: Brooks Westbrook and the Data Driven Lens

Many networks are designed and operationally drive by the configuration and management of features supporting applications and use cases. For network engineering to catch up to the rest of the operational world, it needs to move rapidly towards data driven management based on a solid understanding of the underlying protocols and systems. Brooks Westbrook joins Tom Amman and Russ White to discuss the data driven lens in this episode of the Hedge.

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The Hedge 77: The Internet is for End Users

When the interests of the end user, the operator, and the vendor come into conflict, who should protocol developers favor? According to RFC8890, the needs and desires of the end user should be the correct answer. According to the RFC:

As the Internet increasingly mediates essential functions in societies, it has unavoidably become profoundly political; it has helped people overthrow governments, revolutionize social orders, swing elections, control populations, collect data about individuals, and reveal secrets. It has created wealth for some individuals and companies while destroying that of others. All of this raises the question: For whom do we go through the pain of gathering rough consensus and writing running code?

Mark Nottingham joins Alvaro Retana and Russ White on this episode of the Hedge to discuss why the Internet is for end users.

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