Category: worth reading
IPv6: Instructions for Use
Retirement obviously does not sit well with my friend Tiziano Tofoni; the English version of his IPv6 book just came out.
It is a bit sad, though, that we still need “how to use IPv6” books when the protocol is old enough to enjoy a nice glass of whiskey (in the US) trying to drown its sorrow at its slow adoption.
Worth Exploring: Free, OpenSource IPv6 Textbook
Nick Buraglio and Brian E. Carpenter published a free, open-source IPv6 textbook.
The book seems to be in an early (ever-evolving) stage, but it’s well worth exploring if you’re new to the IPv6 world, and you might consider contributing if you’re a seasoned old-timer.
It would also be nice to have a few online labs to go with it ;)
Worth Exploring: Open-Source Network Automation Labs
Urs Baumann loves hands-on teaching and created tons of lab exercises to support his Infrastructure-as-Code automation course.
During the summer, he published some of them in a collection of GitHub repositories and made them work in GitHub Codespaces. An amazing idea well worth exploring!
Interesting: Crafting Endless AS Paths in BGP
Vincent Bernat documented a quirk I hope you’ll never see outside of a CCIE lab: combining BGP confederations with AS-override can generate endless AS paths.
I agree entirely with his conclusions (avoid both features). However, I still think that replacing an AS within the confederation part of an AS path (which should belong to a single well-managed AS) is not exactly the most brilliant idea I’ve seen.
Fun Reading: AI and Google’s Quarterly Results
I never mastered the fine art of polite diplomatic sarcasm. Brad Casemore is a virtuoso – you’ll love his take on Google’s Quarterly Results: Investors Begin Questioning Efficacy of GenAI Investments.
MUST READ: Making Segment Routing User-Friendly
Dmytro Shypovalov wrote a fantastic article explaining the basics of MPLS-based Segment Routing. It’s pretty much equivalent to everything I ever wrote about SR-MPLS but in a much nicer package. Definitely a must-read.
Worth Reading: AI Is Still a Delusion
Here’s another AI rant to spice your summer: AI Is Still a Delusion, including an excellent example of how the latest LLMs flunk simple logical reasoning. I particularly liked this one-line summary:
The real danger today is not that computers are smarter than us but that we think computers are smarter than us and consequently trust them to make decisions they should not be trusted to make.
It might be worth remembering that quote when an AI-powered management appliance messes up your network because of a false positive ;)
Worth Reading: GitHub Copilot Workspace Review
In Matt Duggan’s blog post, you’ll find a scathing review of another attempt to throw AI spaghetti at the wall to see if they stick: the GitHub Copilot Workspace.
He also succinctly summarized everything I ever wanted to say about the idea of using AI tools to generate networking configurations:
Having a tool that makes stuff that looks right but ends up broken is worse than not having the tool at all.
Worth Reading: Why Do We Have Native VLANs?
Daniel Dib went on another deep dive: Why Do We Have Native VLANs? What I loved most was that he went through the whole 802.1 standard (quite an undertaking) and explained the reasoning that VLAN-aware switches behave the way they do.
You should also read the follow-up post: what happens if a VLAN-unaware switch receives an 802.1Q-tagged frame?
Worth Reading: Terminal Line Editing
In another wonderful deep dive, Julia Evans explains why you can’t edit the command line in some Linux utilities like the ancient sh.
You’ll also figure out:
- Why does CTRL-A jump to the beginning of the line?
- How can you enable command line editing in ancient utilities?
Have fun!
MUST READ: ChatGPT Is Bullshit
Bogdan Golab sent me a link to an (open access) article in Ethics and Information Technology arguing why ChatGPT is bullshit. Straight from the introduction:
Because these programs cannot themselves be concerned with truth, and because they are designed to produce text that looks truth-apt without any actual concern for truth, it seems appropriate to call their outputs bullshit.
Have fun!
Worth Reading: The Evolution of Network Security
Sharada Yeluri published an interesting overview of the evolution of network security, from packet filtering firewalls to GenAI and Quantum Computing (yeah, she works for a networking vendor ;). Definitely worth reading if you’re looking for an intro-level overview.
Worth Reading: Don't Use Excel as a Source of Truth
Some people insist on using Excel as the ultimate source of user-supplied data (including network automation source of truth).
If you agree with me that that’s not necessarily the best idea out there, you might enjoy this rant by Nikhil Suresh.
Worth Reading: You Probably Don't Need AI
Here’s another rant to spice up your weekend: focus on fixing your company’s problems instead of chanting the AI mantra. Have fun ;)
Worth Reading: Cisco SD-Access and IoT Devices
Dan Massameno wrote a series of blog posts describing the challenges you might encounter when connecting Internet-of-Things1 devices to a Cisco SD-Access network. It is an absolute must-read if you have to deal with IoT devices.
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Reading some of his caveats, you’ll quickly confirm the alternate meaning of the IoT acronym: Internet-of-Trash. ↩︎