On the ‘net: Grey Failures and the Law of Large Numbers
You’ve just finished building a 1,000 router fabric using a proper underlay and overlay. You’ve thought of everything, including doing it all with a single SKU, carefully choosing transceivers, using only the best optical cables, and running all the software through a rigorous testing cycle. Time to relax? Perhaps—or perhaps not.
Upcoming Training: How the Internet Really Works
The 29th of May, in 7 days, I’m teaching a four-hour webinar/class on Safari Books Online:
This class isn’t just for network engineers, it’s for anyone interested in how the Internet works. You don’t need prior network engineering experience or knowledge to understand the content–so feel free to forward along to anyone you think might be interested, even managers (!) and coders.
Hedge 227: Provider Consolidation and Competition
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.
Hedge 226: Making Networking Cool Again
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.
Hedge 225: The CCNA
The CCNA has a long history as an important certification for network engineers. While the CCST has been created by Cisco “below” the CCNA, or as a different starting point, many network engineers begin their career with the CCNA. Join Jason Gooley, Wendell Odom, Tom, and Russ as we discuss the most recent updates to the CCNA, the way updates to the program are changing, and Jason’s and Wendell’s updated book on the CCNA.
Hedge 224: Is Open Source a Market Failure?
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.
Hedge 223: The Political Side of Standards with Geoff Huston
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.
Hedge 222: Get out there and publish!
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.
New Course: Coding Skills for Network Engineers
This Friday, Marlon Bailey and I will be teaching a new four-hour class on coding skills for network engineers over on Safari Books Online through Pearson. From the course description:
Network engineers are increasingly expected to know how to perform basic coding, like building scripts to gather information and build or maintain an automation system. In larger organizations with full-time coders, network engineers are expected to effectively work with coders, on their own turf, to build and maintain network automation systems. All of these tasks require a basic knowledge of the structure and terminology of programming. There are a lot of courses that show you how to build your first program, or how to perform basic tasks using common programming languages—this course is different. This course will help you build a “mental map” of the software development space, gathering ideas and patterns learned across years into a simple-to-understand format. In this course you will learn data structures, program flow control, and—most importantly—how to structure software for efficiency and maintainability over the long haul.
For anyone who doesn’t know Marlon, you can find his LinkedIn profile here.