Worth Watching: Machine Learning in a Nutshell

This blog post was initially sent to the subscribers of my SDN and Network Automation mailing list. Subscribe here.

What could be better than an SDN product to bring you closer to a networking nirvana? You guessed it – an SDN product using machine learning.

Want to have some fun? The next time your beloved $vendor rep drops by trying to boost his bonus by persuading you to buy the next-generation machine-learning tool his company just released, invite him to watch James Mickens’ Usenix Security Symposium keynote with you.

After outlining the basics of machine learning, James explained in his signature style all the great things that happen when you connect AI to the Internet, or use it in mission-critical systems.

I particularly loved his conclusions that I’ll start using whenever someone asks me about long-distance vMotion, stretched clusters, and similar MacGyverisms:

  • In three words: Think before deploying.
  • In two words: Think first.
  • In one word: Don’t.

Hope you’ll enjoy that keynote as much as I did!

4 comments:

  1. Great talk, so fun to watch, thanks for sharing.

    Somehow it reminded me of Remy (http://web.mit.edu/remy/), a TCP congestion control implementation based on machine learning. Which might not be so bad, because congestion control only cares about performance, not functionality, but still.
  2. Mickens is teh best.
  3. Great show but very little specific information. Need to spend almost 1 hour to learn that ML is bad;) Frankly speaking this conclusion is expected since the beginning.
Add comment
Sidebar