Reaction: Overly Attached
The longer you work on one system or application, the deeper the attachment. For years you have been investing in it—adding new features, updating functionality, fixing bugs and corner cases, polishing, and refactoring. If the product serves a need, you likely reap satisfaction for a job well done (and maybe you even received some raises or promotions as a result of your great work).
Attachment is a two-edged sword—without some form of attachment, it seems there is no way to have pride in your work. On the other hand, attachment leads to poorly designed solutions. For instance, we all know the hyper-certified person who knows every in and out of a particular vendor’s solution, and hence solves every problem in terms of that vendor’s products. Or the person who knows a particular network automation system and, as a result, solves every problem through automation.
When should you use IPv6 PA space?
I was reading RFC8475 this week, which describes some IPv6 multihoming ‘net connection solutions. This set me to thinking about when you should uses IPv6 PA space. To begin, it’s useful to review the concept of IPv6 PI and PA space. PI, or provider independent, space, is assigned by a regional routing registry to network…
The BGP Monitoring Protocol (BMP)
If you run connections to the ‘net at any scale, even if you are an “enterprise” (still a jinxed term, IMHO), you will quickly find it would be very useful to have a time series record of the changes in BGP at your edge. Even if you are an “enterprise,” knowing what changes have taken…
Research: Legal Barriers to RPKI Deployment
Much like most other problems in technology, securing the reachability (routing) information in the internet core as much or more of a people problem than it is a technology problem. While BGP security can never be perfect (in an imperfect world, the quest for perfection is often the cause of a good solution’s failure), there…
Whither Network Engineering? (Part 3)
In the previous two parts of this series, I have looked at the reasons I think the networking ecosystem is bound to change and why I think disaggregation is going to play a major role in that change. If I am right about the changes happening, what will become of network engineers? The bifurcation of knowledge,…
Whither Network Engineering? (Part 2)
In the first post of this series at the turn of 2019, I considered the forces I think will cause network engineering to radically change. What about the timing of these changes? I hear a lot of people say” “this stuff isn’t coming for twenty years or more, so don’t worry about it… there is plenty of…
Whither Network Engineering? (Part 1)
An article on successful writers who end up driving delivery trucks. My current reading in epistemology for an upcoming PhD seminar. An article on the bifurcation of network engineering skills. Several conversations on various slacks I participate in. What do these things have in common? Just this: What is to become of network engineering? While it…
Optimal Route Reflection: Next Hop Self
Recently, I posted a video short take I did on BGP optimal route reflection. A reader wrote in the comments to that post: …why can’t Router set next hop self to updates to router E and avoid this suboptimal path? To answer this question, it is best to return to the scene of the suboptimality—…
Research: BGP Routers and Parrots
The BGP specification suggests implementations should have three tables: the adj-rib-in, the loc-rib, and the adj-rib-out. The first of these three tables should contain the routes (NLRIs and attributes) transmitted by each of the speaker’s peers. The second table should contain the calculated best paths; these are the routes that will be (or are) installed…
CAA Records and Site Security
The little green lock—now being deprecated by some browsers—provides some level of comfort for many users when entering personal information on a web site. You probably know the little green lock means the traffic between the host and the site is encrypted, but you might not stop to ask the fundamental question of all cryptography:…