SKILLS
Hedge 101: In Situ OAM
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.
Leveraging Similarities
We tend to think every technology and every product is roughly unique—so we tend to stay up late at night looking at packet captures and learning how to configure each product individually, and chasing new ones as if they are the brightest new idea (or, in marketing terms, the best thing since sliced bread). Reality check: they aren’t. This applies across life, of course, but especially to technology. From a recent article—
RFC1925 rule 11 states—
Rule 11 isn’t just a funny saying—rule 11 is your friend. If want to learn new things quickly, learn rule 11 first. A basic understanding of the theory of networking will carry across all products, all marketing campaigns, and all protocols.
Hedge 90: Andrew Wertkin and a Naïve Reliance on Automation
Automation is surely one of the best things to come to the networking world—the ability to consistently apply a set of changes across a wide array of network devices has speed at which network engineers can respond to customer requests, increased the security of the network, and reduced the number of hours required to build and maintain large-scale systems. There are downsides to automation, as well—particularly when operators begin to rely on automation to solve problems that really should be solved someplace else.
In this episode of the Hedge, Andrew Wertkin from Bluecat Networks joins Tom Ammon and Russ White to discuss the naïve reliance on automation.
The Hedge 85: Terry Slattery and the ROI of Automation
It’s easy to assume automation can solve anything and that it’s cheap to deploy—that there are a lot of upsides to automation, and no downsides. In this episode of the Hedge, Terry Slattery joins Tom Ammon and Russ White to discuss something we don’t often talk about, the Return on Investment (ROI) of automation.
Is it really the best just because its the most common?
I cannot count the number of times I’ve heard someone ask these two questions—
- What are other people doing?
- What is the best common practice?
While these questions have always bothered me, I could never really put my finger on why. I ran across a journal article recently that helped me understand a bit better. The root of the problem is this—what does best common mean, and how can following the best common produce a set of actions you can be confident will solve your problem?
Bellman and Oorschot say best common practice can mean this is widely implemented. The thinking seems to run something like this: the crowd’s collective wisdom will probably be better than my thinking… more sets of eyes will make for wiser or better decisions. Anyone who has studied the madness of crowds will immediately recognize the folly of this kind of state. Just because a lot of people agree it’s a good idea to jump off a cliff does not mean it is, in fact, a good idea to jump off a cliff.
Perhaps it means something closer to this is no worse than our competitors. If that’s the meaning, though, it’s a pretty cynical result. It’s saying, “I don’t mind condemning myself to mediocrity so long as I see everyone else doing the same thing.” It doesn’t sound like much of a way to grow a business.
The authors do provide their definition—
The thinking seems to run something like this—it’s likely that everyone else has tried many different ways of doing this; that they have all settled on doing this, this way, means all those other methods are probably not as good as this one for some reason.
Does this work? There’s no way to tell without further investigation. How many of the other folks doing “this” spent serious time trying alternatives, and how many just decided the cheapest way was the best no matter how poor the result might be? In fact, how can we know what the results of doing things “this way” have in all those other networks? Where would we find this kind of information?
In the end, I can’t ever make much sense out of the question, “what is everyone else doing?” Discovering what everyone else is doing might help me eliminate possibilities (that didn’t work for them, so I certainly don’t want to try it), or it might help me understand the positive and negative attributes of a given solution. Still, I don’t understand why “common” should infer “best.”
The best solution for this situation is simply going to be the best solution. Feel free to draw on many sources, but don’t let other people determine what you should be doing.
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.
The Hedge 78: Mike Bushong and Radical Candor
Communication is one of those soft skills so often cited as a key to success—but what does effective communication entail? Mike Bushong joins Eyvonne Sharp and Russ White on the Hedge to discuss radical candor, and the importance of giving and taking honest feedback to relationships and business.