Category: worth reading

Lívio Zanol Puppim published a series of blog posts describing a full-stack network automation, including GitOps with GitLab, handling secrets with Hashicorp Vault, using Ansible and AWX to run automation scripts, continuous integration with Gitlab CI Runner, and topped it off with a REST API and React-based user interface.

You might not want to use the exact same components, but it’s probably worthwhile going through his solution and explore the source code. He’s also looking for any comments or feedback you might have on how to improve what he did.

Russ White’s Weekend Reads are full of gems, including a recent pointer to the AI Illusion – State-of-the-Art Chatbots Aren’t What They Seem article. It starts with “Artificial intelligence is an oxymoron. Despite all the incredible things computers can do, they are still not intelligent in any meaningful sense of the word.” and it only gets better.

While the article focuses on natural language processing (GPT-3 model), I see no reason why we should expect better performance from AI in networking (see also: AI/ML in Networking – The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly).

You MUST read the next masterpiece coming from Ethan Banks: Career Advice I’d Give To 20, 30 and 40-Something Year Old Me. I found this bit particularly relevant:

Your life is at least half over. Stop wasting time doing things other people think are important.

If only Ethan would have told me that wisdom ten years ago.

Iwan Rahabok’s open-source VMware Operations Guide is now also available in Markdown-on-GitHub format. Networking engineers support vSphere/NSX infrastructure might be particularly interested in the Network Metrics chapter.

Did you ever wonder why a company would replace a working technology with an overhyped pile of half-baked code? Why we at $FAMOUS_COMPANY Switched to $HYPED_TECHNOLOGY by Saagar Jha is a hilarious take on the subject.

Want more? How about migrating your Exadata database to AWS?

Use the email sent by Randy Bush to RIPE routing WG mailing list every time a security researcher claims a technology with no built-in security mechanism is insecure (slightly reworded to make it more generic).

Lately, I am getting flak about $SomeTechnology not providing protection from this or that malicious attack. Indeed it does not.

Erik Hoel published a wonderful article describing how he’s fighting the algorithm that is deciding whether to approve a charge on his credit card.

My credit card now has a kami. Such new technological kamis are, just like the ancient ones, fickle; sometimes blessing us, sometimes hindering us, and all we as unwilling animists can do is a modern ritual to the inarticulate fey creatures that control our inboxes and our mortgages and our insurance rates.

There are networking vendors unleashing similar “spirits” on our networks. Welcome to the brave new world ;)

Julio Perez wrote a wonderful blog post describing how he combined netlab and containerlab¹ to build Arista cEOS labs.

Hint: when you’re done with that blog post, keep reading and add his blog to your RSS feed – he wrote some great stuff in the past.

Found a pointer to another you cannot beat the laws of physics or networking result: you cannot avoid latency spikes with end-to-end congestion control regardless of the amount of unicorn dust or hype you’re throwing at the problem (original paper).

Have to work with VMware SD-WAN (the entity formerly known as VeloCloud)? You might find interesting tidbits in Crazy about VMware SD-WAN by Alexander Marhold.

Stumbled upon a totally unexpected fun fact:

Every server vendor either peaked or hits the peak of maximum units sold per quarter in 2015. In the years that follow, the monthly averages drop.

Keep that in mind the next time Cisco sales team comes along with a UCS presentation.

Years ago, I compared EVPN to SIP – it has a gazillion options, and every vendor implements a different subset of them, making interoperability a nightmare.

According to Andrew Alston, SRv6 is no better (while being a security nightmare). No surprise there.

Tom Hollingsworth published a more eloquent version of what I’ve been saying for ages:

• Complexity belongs to the end nodes;
• Network should provide end-to-end packet transport, not a fix for every stupidity someone managed to push down the stack;
• There’s nothing wrong with being a well-performing utility instead of pretending your stuff is working on unicorn farts and fairy dust.

Obviously it’s totally against the vested interest of any networking vendor out there to admit it.

Christoph Jaggi, the author of Ethernet Encryption webinar and ethernet encryptor market overviews launched a new site in which he collected tons material he created in the past – the network security and news and articles sections are definitely worth exploring.

I’m positive that this pointer to The Gift of It’s Your Problem Now by Avery Pennarun will generate similar comments to the blockchain one: “he’s an idiot, and you’re an idiot for wasting my time posting this”.

That might be true, but in that case he’s my kind of idiot, and you shouldn’t complain about a gift anyway – there are tons of high-quality lolcats videos waiting for you instead.