Simplification is a constant theme not only here, and in my talks, but across the network engineering world right now. But what does this mean practically? Looking at a complex network, how do you begin simplifying? The first option is to abstract, abstract again, and abstract some more. But before diving into deep abstraction, remember…
Grey Failures in the Real World Most “smaller scale” operators probably believe they are not impacted by grey failures, but this is probably not true. Given the law of large numbers, there must be some number of grey failures in some percentage of smaller networks simply because there are so many of them. What is…
In a recent podcast, Ivan and Dinesh ask why there is a lot of interest in running link state protocols on data center fabrics. They begin with this point: if you have less than a few hundred switches, it really doesn’t matter what routing protocol you run on your data center fabric. Beyond this, there…
Over at IT ProPortal, Dr Greg Law has an article up chiding the networking world for the poor software quality. To wit— When networking companies ship equipment out containing critical bugs, providing remediation in response to their discovery can be almost impossible. Their engineers back at base often lack the data they need to reproduce…
For various reasons, humans tend to prefer complex resolutions to simple ones. The combined effect of many humans preferring more complex resolutions over time means large-scale systems tend to accrue complexity, until they fall into a complexity wormhole, becoming wholly incomprehensible. @Search Networking
I recently joined Ethan Banks for a Packet Pushers episode around the trade offs of hiding information in the control plane. This was a terrific show; you can listen to it by clicking on the link below. Today on the Priority Queue, we’re gonna hide some information. Oh, like route summarization? Sure, like route summarization.…