Category: Worth Reading

A long while ago, I wrote about the brokenness of socket API and lack of session layer in TCP/IP stack.

It looks like I’m not the only one with heretic opinions; Fred Baker reached similar conclusions in his Happier Eyeballs draft and Brian Carpenter recently published a lengthy article title IP Addresses Considered Harmful which documents (among other things) the history of socket API and the reasons DNS isn’t tightly integrated with it. Both documents are definitely worth reading.

In 1998, the cover story of ACM netWorker magazine discussed the dawn of the stupid network – an architecture with smart edge nodes and simple packet forwarding code. Obviously we learned nothing in all those years – we’re still having the same discussions.

Here are a few juicy quotes from that article (taken completely out of context solely for your enjoyment).

During the last days there have been rumors of flying pigs and open speculations whether I’d rename my blog to junoshints or junioshints due to my Junos-related posts. When even my wife told me to get my act together, it was time to move ... and you can see the first changes at the top left corner of the screen.

Data Center

RFC 6165 documents the layer-2 related IS-IS extensions. No more excuses along the “TRILL standards are not ready” lines. Are you listening, Brocade and HP?

Data Center Feng Shui: Architecting for Predictable Performance. A nice introductory explanation of advantages of hardware-based forwarding.

When is a Fabric not a Fabric? Juniper continues the “who’s the smartest kid on the block” game. I thought we’re all adults; stop the “bright future” promises and get the products out.

Last gems found in dusty corners of my cluttered Inbox:

• The Myths of IT – Part 1 and Part 2. A must-read for anyone working in the IT industry.
• Phone - Scott Adams (of the Dilbert fame) ranting about smartphones. Priceless.
• Maybe you only need it because you have it – seen it too many times. Might also apply to long-distance vMotion.

Every Internet-related post is a great opportunity to increase comment count. I’ll pass this time, here are the articles I found interesting with little or no comments from my side. First the generic Internet:

• IPv6 and Transitional Myths – Great mythbuster by Geoff Huston
• Google IPv6 statistics

And then my favorite controversy:

• Net Neutrality for Dummies
• Network Neutrality: Pretty Much Just Socialism (I’m obviously not the only one claiming that)
• ISP's top data hog gobbles 2.7TB of data in a month – a bit old but still relevant
• Congress Needs to Step In for Net Neutrality...Really? Seriously?
• Mobile Carriers Dream of Charging per Page

Links to great data center, storage and virtualization articles found in the depths of my bloated Inbox:

Technology short takes by Scott Lowe. A must-read.

Keys to Virtualization Success – this is how you do it right. Great job, Bob!

I published this blog post in December 2010. As I was cleaning it up 10 years later, only three out of original 11 links still worked. Whatever…

Some Internet Architectural Guidelines and Philosophy – a must-read for people inventing crazy schemes like load balancing based on unicast flooding or MAC-over-MAC proprietary network virtualization (you know who you are but I doubt you read RFCs or my blog).

Spoofing Google search history with CSRF – like we didn’t have enough security problems, here’s another one.