If I asked you to summarize the great works of literature in a few paragraphs, how would you do it? Would you read over the whole thing and try to give a play-by-play of the book? Would it be more like Cliff’s Notes, summarizing the major themes but skipping over the details? Maybe you’d offer up the conclusion only and leave it as an exercise to the reader to find out? There are a lot of ways to do it and almost all of them seem insurmountable.

What if there was an easy way to jump right into starting to discuss a topic or summarize something? What if you could find a way to easily get people interested in your ideas? Believe or not, it’s not as hard as you might think. People usually freak out because they feel like there are too many places to start when they want to write something. They decide to try and figure out the perfect way to get going and, more often than not, they paralyze themselves with inaction.

So how do you get things moving? You have to find the hook.

By Hook or Crook

What’s the hook? Most people think it’s like a fish hook. Something you set to reel someone in. And that’s not far from the truth. The hook, when talking about writing or even music, is a section that is designed to catch your attention and keep it. The hook is what’s responsible for those catchy choruses you can’t get out of your head once you hear them.

But the hook is also the way you can get into a heady topic. The hook is the way you get things start. You find the attention-catching part of the story or the topic that you want to talk about and you grab it. Set the hook. That’s the first step. Figuring out what you want to talk about and setting that hook.

The key is to avoid getting overwhelmed. Don’t try to say too much. The hook doesn’t work if it’s too big. It doesn’t work if it’s too complicated. You have to find something small and relatable if you want people to bite. You need a single idea. A single topic of some kind. Make it easy and your audience will surely bite on it.

Reeling Them In

Okay, so you’ve successfully set the hook. Now what? Do you just tug and tug on it until you get what you’re after? Every fisherman knows that’s a bad idea. You have to gently pull and convince your quarry to come. You have to build something that leads people to where you want them to be.

Writing is no different. You have your hook but you have to support it with facts and evidence. You have to come back to your main idea and reinforce it over and over. That’s how the hook gets into the reader’s mind. You have to make sure they aren’t going to forget it. The hook is the takeaway from the piece you’re writing.

When your reader finishes you want them to have that idea ringing in their ears and in their head. You want them to think of your idea like a chorus from a song. Resonating and repeating. Not in the insidious ear worm kind of way. But in the way of your favorite movie scenes or favorite songs. Something that they enjoy and want to keep coming back to.

Fishing In Practice

Okay, so this is all well and good when you’re trying to sit down and write something. But what about when you’re listening to a presentation? How can this help you with your pre-writing?

The biggest thing to do is to start looking for hooks early. Most good presenters will tee up an idea or a theme and run with it. They’ll do most of the hard work for you. All you have to do it pick up on it. Find the theme running through everything and start taking notes about it. Using things like mind maps are great for this style of note taking because you’re going to try and pull all your details back to that main hook.

But what if there isn’t a hook? What if the main idea is scattered or the presentation isn’t built in such a way as to present something that has a clear, definitive theme? Well, that’s where the creative part comes into play. You’re going to have to do a little fishing of your own. You need to look at the media you’re given and try to find your hook. You may have to try a few things out first to get something worth talking about. But once you find the hook in the information you’re given you’re going to want to run with it. That’s how you know you’ve found something good.

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Tom’s Take

A lot of my briefings and other coverage writing on Gestalt IT uses this kind of style now. I try to find the hook to pull people in to read about what I’m discussing. It’s not always mean or nefarious. Instead I want to engage people and show them how I look at things. Hopefully it gives them a new perspective and helps them understand deep technical topics. And maybe it’s enough to bring them back for more along the way.

Here is another post of the series on basic network troubleshooting and tools under Linux. In this post, I will talk about the cURL command.   Others posts of the series This post is part of a series about basic Linux Networking tips and tricks. The others posts of this series are: The ip and nmcli commands The mtr command The ss and netstat commands The curl command   What is cURL? cURL is a Linux command-line tool for getting or sending data and files, using an URL syntax. Since cURL…

The post Basic Linux Networking tips and tricks part-4: curl command appeared first on AboutNetworks.net.

Pete Lumbis started his Cumulus Linux 4.0 update with an overview of differences between Cumulus Linux on hardware switches and Cumulus VX, and continued with an in-depth list of ASIC families supported by Cumulus Linux.

You can watch his presentation, as well as the more in-depth overview of Cumulus Linux concepts by Dinesh Dutt, in the recently-updated What Is Cumulus Linux All About video.

I’ve been getting into the twitter poll thing lately and its producing some interesting polling by asking questions. Yesterday I asked are you eager to go back to the office ?   With 129 responses we have statistical significance because the sample is large. What conclusions might we draw from this survey ? Reminder: Twitter […]

The post Who wants to work in an office ? appeared first on EtherealMind.

It’s amazing how sometimes people fond of sharing their opinions and buzzwords on various social media can’t answer simple questions. Today’s blog post is based on a true story… a “senior network architect” fully engaged in a recent hype cycle couldn’t answer a simple question:

Why exactly would you need VXLAN and EVPN?

We could spend a day (or a week) discussing the nuances of that simple question, but all I have at the moment is a single web page, so here we go…

Live tech events have been put on indefinite hold during the pandemic. Here's 5 reasons why big shows will make a comeback (though I can't say when).

The post Live Tech Events Will Return. Here’s Why appeared first on Packet Pushers.

A few weeks ago I described the basics of AWS networking, now it’s time to describe how different Azure is.

As always, it would be best to watch my Azure Networking webinar to get the details. This blog post is the abridged CliffsNotes version of the webinar (and here‘s the reason I won’t write a similar blog post for other public clouds ;).

Sad but true.

The post SNMP is still dominant appeared first on EtherealMind.

Here’s the final push before we hit the summer break at the end of June (and recover a bit from the relentless production of new content we had throughout the first half of 2020):

• I finished the Introduction to Containers and Docker update just in time to cover the nuances of Docker Networking before the summer break. The first live session will take place today, the second one on June 11th.
• Later this week (May 28th) we’ll have some fun with routing protocol basics.
• Dinesh Dutt covered Vagrant in his last live session and plans to cover other network simulation tools on June 2nd.
• We did a “should I use VMware NSX or Cisco ACI” webinar a few years ago. In the meantime both vendors launched major new features, so it’s high time for a thorough refresh starting on June 9th.
• Mario Rosi will continue the Cisco ACI Introduction series on June 16th.
• David Barroso described the basics of Nornir in our network automation course. We’ll turn that material into an independent webinar (available with standard ipSpace.net subscription) and David plans to augment it with a deep dive into Nornir internals in a live session on June 18th.
• I will need another live session on June 23rd to continue the NSX-or-ACI comparison, and we plan to start the summer break on June 25th.

Helping a friend of mine figure out the details of using Salt in Zero-Touch-Provisioning environments, Zach Moody sent me a description of their process, and was kind enough to allow me to turn it into a blog post.

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We follow the same basic ZTP process you would with anything else. Salt drives the parts that interface with the network devices with information from our source-of-truth, NetBox.

A "New IP" framework was proposed to an ITU Study Group last year. This framework envisages a resurgence of a network-centric view of communications architectures where application behaviours are moderated by network-managed control mechanisms. It's not the first time that we’ve seen proposals to rethink the basic architecture of the Internet’s technology and it certainly won’t be the last. But is it going to really going to influence the evolution of the Internet? What can we observe about emerging technologies that will play a critical role in the coming years? Here’s my personal selection of recent technical innovations that I would add into the set of emerging technologies that will exercise a massive influence over the coming ten years.

David Varnum created a fantastic leaf-and-spine fabric of vEOS switches running with GNS3 and automated with Ansible playbooks.

Not only that - his blog post includes detailed setup instructions, and the corresponding GitHub repository contains all the source code you need to get it up and running.

One of the things that I look forward to most during Cisco Live is the opportunity to meet with people. It’s been quite a few years since I’ve been to a session during the conference. My work with Tech Field Day has kept me very busy for the past several Cisco Live events. But at the end of the day I enjoy strolling down to the Social Media hub and talking to anyone I see. Because people make Cisco Live what it is.

The Legend of Tom’s Corner has grown over the years. It’s more than just a few tables in a place where people hang out. It stands for a community. It means a lot to so many different people. It’s about meeting new friends and catching up with old ones and feeling like you belong. For so many, Tom’s Corner and the Social Media Hub is the center of Cisco Live.

And yet, we now live in extraordinary times. The plan we had for what Cisco Live would look like for us earlier this year is radically different right now. Prohibitions on travel and meetings in large groups means we will be experiencing Cisco Live from our homes afar instead of the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. The sessions we attend will be online. The keynotes streamed without seating and traffic directions. Although the office chairs at home will probably be more comfortable than conference seating.

But what about that in-person aspect to things? What about meeting up at the Social Media Hub and hanging out with all our friends? Well, the social media aspect to the event is going to be even more important now. Twitter and Slack and iMessage are going to be our primary forms of communication. We’re going to be twice as social even without being able to be around people thanks to the need to use programs to connect. But it’s not going to feel the same without being able to see someone.

A Virtual Corner

Because things are so crazy and because we’re not all going to get to be in the same place this year to hang out at Tom’s Corner, it’s time to bring Tom’s Corner to the virtual landscape of Cisco Live. Thanks to the power of Zoom and the patronage of Tech Field Day, we’re going to be holding Tom’s Virtual Corner at Cisco Live US 2020!

With the power of the revolution of technology and video chat we’re going to have the option to hang out and chat just like we always do! Granted, we’re not going to have to fight over places to sit this year so it may be better this way. Also, less walking! We’re going to have the meeting running from about 8:00am PT through 1:00pm PT so don’t worry if you can’t join right at the start. I’m sure there are going to be people coming and going all day.

In order to be a part of Tom’s Virtual Corner at Cisco Live US 2020, you’re going to need to send me an email at tom@networkingnerd.net or a DM on Twitter with the email address you want the calendar invitation sent to. Yes, that’s a very manual process. But given the number of people that like to invade Zoom calls this is a necessary precaution. Just send me an email with the title “Tom’s Virtual Corner Invitiation” and I’ll make sure you’re on the list. After that we can get everything going just like if we were hanging at the actual corner.

This is supposed to be a fun time to hang and enjoy the company of each other in a format that is hard to replicate, so a couple of ground rules:

• Disruptive attendees may be kicked at the discretion of the hosts.
• Follow Wheaton’s Law as the Prime Behavior Directive. If you have a question about whether or not you’re violating that law, you probably are.
• Be respectful of your peers and friends. Make this a positive experience for everyone. I don’t want to have to be the fun police but if that needs to happen so be it.

It’s that simple. Be cool, act cool, and we’ll have fun.

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Tom’s Take

I’m going to miss the Social Media Hub this year. I’m going to miss my friends and I am also going to regret not getting to make new ones. But maybe we can salvage a bit of that spark this way. We might miss the sign pic or the crazy antics that happen with giant Lego figures or tiaras or unicorn masks. But we’ll be there in spirit and that’s what counts. And, if nothing else, the tenth anniversary of Tom’s Corner next year is going to blow the roof off the place!

After describing Cisco SD-WAN fundamentals and its network abstraction mechanisms, David Penaloza explained the components of Cisco SD-WAN solution and its architecture, including in which plane each element operates and its assigned role in the overlay network.

Thoughts on why Facebook is building out its subsea cable networks.

The post Facebook 2Africa – Why Aren’t Telcos Doing This ? appeared first on Packet Pushers.

I got this question about the use of AS numbers on data center leaf switches participating in an MLAG cluster:

In the Leaf-and-Spine Fabric Architectures you made the recommendation to have the same AS number on all members of an MLAG cluster and run iBGP between them. In the Autonomous Systems and AS Numbers article you discuss the option of having different AS number per leaf. Which one should I use… and do I still need the EBGP peering between the leaf pair?

As always, there’s a bit of a gap between theory and practice ;), but let’s start with a leaf-and-spine fabric diagram illustrating both concepts:

When I started designing Data Center Infrastructure for Networking Engineers webinar I wanted to create something that would allow someone fluent in networking but not in adjacent fields like servers or storage to grasp the fundamentals of data center technologies, from server virtualization and containers to data center fabrics and storage protocols.

Here’s what a network architect said about the webinar:

Lately I’ve been working on graphics programming in Rust, as a continuation of my first steps with the language. As part of this work, I created a type I created called Vec3f, to hold cartesian coordinates for a given vector: #[derive(Copy, Clone, Debug)] struct Vec3f { x: f32, y: f32, z: f32 } In the natural course of this work, I needed to add certain methods for this type to allow me to perform calculations like cross product, and dot/scalar product.

During the Comparing Transparent Bridging and IP Routing part of How Networks Really Work webinar I said something along the lines of:

While packets should never be reordered in transit in transparent bridging, there’s no such guarantee in IP networks, and IP applications should tolerate out-of-order packets.

One of my regular readers who designs and builds networks supporting VoIP applications disagreed with that citing numerous real-life examples.

Of course he was right, but let’s get the facts straight first:

Giphy is in places that Facebook isn't, so its competitive data

The post Opinion: Facebook Buys Giphy appeared first on EtherealMind.

A few days ago Greg Ferro published an interesting post claiming DHCP is an example of intent-based networking (a bit less tongue-in-cheek than my “so is OSPF configuration” rant from 2017). BTW, so is RADIUS or TACACS+ ;)

He got quickly “corrected” by Phil Gervasi who loosely relied on Gartner’s definition of Intent-Based Networking, and claimed that an intent-based networking system should have three major components:

If you treat your engineers like interchangeable human resources you’ll get the results you deserve ;)… but if you wonder how to make them keep them happy and production, there’s no better place to start than the Key Factors in Attracting and Retaining Talent by Daniel Dib.

I’m a storyteller. I realize this based on the fact that I tell them a lot. I’ve been told by a lot of people that I tell stories all the time. I’m okay with this. And a lot of the time I’m totally good at it. But one of the side effects of being someone that enjoys telling stories is that you recognize them in others and you start critiquing.

One of the more recent trends I’ve seen in product marketing revolves around stories. We’ve seen people telling all kinds of narratives about how disparate pieces of the puzzle fit together. It’s important because it frames the discussion for everyone. But I’ve also noticed some companies focus less on the framing story and more on the pieces. And it made me realize that’s a different kind of story.

Pieces and Parts

Merriam-Webster defines an anthology as a collection of selected literary pieces or passages or works of art or music. When I think of an anthology movie or video series, I think of a collection of disconnected stories around a framing device. Sometimes that device is as tenuous as a shared narrator, such as the Twilight Zone or Tales from the Crypt. That these series have been made into movies shows how well the format can be adapted to longer media.

Whereas a typical drama has a beginning, middle, and end that follows the same characters throughout the whole runtime, anthologies tend to have segments that focus on a specific piece that’s not necessarily connected to the rest. It doesn’t have to be connected because it’s a self-contained piece. The only connection to the rest of the story is the framing device.

If you’re brain is already working on how to extend this to technology, you’ve probably already equated the framing device to the usual “positioning statement” that’s given at the beginning of a presentation. Here’s the strategy or the vision for how we want to change the world. The individual pieces that the company makes are the parts of the anthology. They are the singular stories that tell the bigger narrative. Or at least they’re supposed to.

In the case of the Twilight Zone, there is no connection aside from Rod Serling telling us about the story. It’s like he’s reading them out of different books. On the opposite side of the spectrum is Pulp Fiction. This is probably the most beloved Quentin Tarantino movie. It’s a tightly-integrated anthology. All three stories are interwoven with each other. Even though they are three separate narratives they share the same characters and setting. Characters from the first story appear in the second and third. It feels like a real connected narrative.

The difference between Pulp Fiction and the Twilight Zone is pretty apparent. So too does the difference between companies that have tightly integrated the story for their individual pieces versus a company that has just put someone in front of the parts to tell you how it should all work together.

Discussion in the Details

When you’re deciding how to tell your product marketing story, ask yourself every once in a while “How does this tie into the big picture?” If it takes you more than ten seconds to answer that question yourself you’re on the road to an anthology series and not a cohesive story. Always refer back to the original statement. Frame your discussion along the lines of the basic premise of your story.

Think of it like writing paragraphs in middle school. Have a main idea and a couple of supporting details that refer back to the main idea. Always make sure you’re referring back to the main idea. If you don’t you need to evaluate what you’re trying to say. If you want a cohesive discussion you have to see the thread that ties everything together.

That’s not to say that every product marketing story needs to be tightly integrated and cohesive across everything. In fact, trying to tie some random piece of technology into the bigger story with a random framing device can feel stilted and out of place. It has to make sense in the narrative. Claiming you have a cohesive strategy for cloud storage is great when you add in telemetry and SD-WAN support. But if you try to pivot to talking about 5G and how it supports your cloud storage you’re not going to be able to tie that into anything without it feeling out of place.

Go back to the basics. Ask yourself what the story is. Don’t try to focus on the pieces. Focus instead on what you want to tell. Some of the best anthologies work because they have different storytellers contributing to the overall piece. If you have a story from a single storytelling you get some exciting integration. But if you have different ideas and visions working together you can come up with some really interesting discussions. Don’t sell your people’s ideas short. Just give them the direction they need to make it work.

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Tom’s Take

Before anyone starts filling in the blanks about who the company in question might be, the answer is “all of them”. At some point or another, almost every company I’ve ever seen has failed at telling a good story about their technology. I don’t fault them for it. Marketing is hard. Making deep tech work for normal people is hard to do. I’m not trying to single any one company out. Instead, what I’m saying is that everyone needs to do a better job of telling the story. Focus on what you want to say. Figure out how to make your vision sound more like Infinity War and less like Twilight Zone. The more integrated your message, the less likely people are to focus on the parts they like the best to the detriment of the rest of the story.

A while ago we discussed a software-focused view of Network Interface Cards (NICs) with Luke Gorrie, and a hardware-focused view of them with Or Gerlitz (Mellanox), Andy Gospodarek (Broadcom) and Jiri Pirko (Mellanox).

Why would anyone want to implement features in hardware and not in software, and what would be the best hardware implementation? We discussed these dilemmas with Silvano Gai in Episode 110 of Software Gone Wild podcast.

I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but I rarely get emails along the lines of “I deployed SD-WAN and it was the best thing we did in the last decade” (trust me, I would publish those if they’d come from a semi-trusted source).

What I usually get are sad experiences from people being exposed to vendor brainwashing or deployments that failed to meet expectations (but according to Systems Engineering Director working for an aggressive SD-WAN vendor that’s just because they didn’t do their research, and thus did everything wrong).

Here’s another story coming from Adrian Giacometti.

Respnding to Phil's assertion that DHCP isn't Intent

The post Response: DHCP is not Intent Based Networking – Networkphil appeared first on EtherealMind.

Whenever I was comparing VMware NSX and Cisco ACI a few years ago (in late 2010s in case you’re reading this in a far-away future), someone would inevitably ask “and how would you connect a bare metal server to a VMware NSX environment?”

While NSX-T has that capability since release 2.5 (more about that in a later blog post), let’s start with the big question: why would you need to?

This year I’ve been picking up Rust as not only a new learning opportunity but also in service to a few side-projects I’ve been getting involved with. Like a lot of developers, I learn by doing. After spending a few weeks reading the Rust book and watching videos, I looked for some easy project ideas that I could use to explore the language that goes further than a simple “Hello World” which often doesn’t actually give you much breadth at all.

If you're considering Cisco's SD Access as part of a campus refresh, comparing different campus networking solutions, or want to understand Cisco’s product strategy, this Packet Pushers Ignition video course is for you. Taught by Phil Gervasi, this 8-lesson course provides a comprehensive technical overview of SD Access and its core components, examines the product's business case, and more. It's available now for Ignition members.

The post Got Questions About Cisco’s SD Access? New Packet Pushers Ignition Course Has Answers appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Dell Technologies has developed a validated, supported distribution of the SONiC network OS that combines SONiC’s open-source core with additional features tailored to meet enterprise needs. By pairing the open-source SONiC with merchant silicon, organizations can drive network transformation and take advantage of a vibrant ecosystem of software, protocols, and tools.

The post Power Up Network Automation With Dell Technologies’ SONiC NOS appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Ned Bellavance and Ethan Banks explain the basics of VMware’s Tanzu Kubernetes Grid, a tool for creating and managing Kubernetes clusters, no matter what KaaS offerings you’re using. Layers on layers on layers–turtles all the way down. Sound complex? Tanzu would argue it’s not. In fact, they are addressing a problem increasingly important–how do you […]

The post Managing Kubernetes Clusters At Scale With Tanzu – Day Two Cloud Podcast Video appeared first on Packet Pushers.

In early April 2020 I ran another live session in my How Networks Really Work webinar. It was supposed to be an easy one, explaining the concepts of packet forwarding and routing protocols… but of course I decided to cover most solutions we’ve encountered in the last 50 years, ranging from Virtual Circuits and Source Route Bridging to Segment Routing (which, when you think about it, is just slightly better SRB over IPv6), so I never got to routing protocols.

That webinar was supposed to be an introductory one, but of course I got pulled down all sorts of rabbit trails, and even as I was explaining interesting stuff I realized a beginner would have a really hard time following along… but then I silently gave up. Obviously I’m not meant to create introduction-to-something material.

Distributed tracing is the dark art of tracking a transaction that passes through several microservices for troubleshooting purposes. Why was the transaction slow? Hard to say, especially when the failure is intermittent. Ned Bellavance and Ethan Banks explain the problem and how SolarWinds Application Performance Monitoring suite is tackling it with Pingdom, Loggly, and AppOptics. […]

The post Aid Complex Troubleshooting With Distributed Tracing – Day Two Cloud Podcast Video appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Imagine a life where you would be able to…

• Find all interfaces that have VRRP configured but no useful VRRP neighbor;
• Find all OSPF adjacencies that should be up but are not;
• Get an alert every time the default IP route is lost;
• Find all MTU mismatches in your network;
• List all VXLAN-to-VLAN mappings across your data center, and find if two different VLANs map into the same VXLAN VNI;
• Compare IP routes in your data center to those you had yesterday;
• Verify that IP routing tables on all spine switches contain the same prefixes;
• Do the same comparison before and after a software upgrade;
• Identify changes in IP routing tables or ARP tables that happened between yesterday evening and this morning;

… and be able to do all that in a multi-vendor environment without writing tons of Ansible playbooks or Python code.

Pensando Systems is a startup that threatens to be a juggernaut if past performance of the founders is any indicator of future results. Pensando’s made an ARM processor and paired it to a NIC and orchestration platform. Put the NIC in your servers and manage the NIC fleet centrally. Use the platform to create networking […]

The post Build Your Network Apps On Pensando’s Cloud Of SmartNICs – Day Two Cloud Video appeared first on Packet Pushers.

A tweet by Corey Quinn pointed me to his hilarious riff on the you are not Google and don’t have the same problems theme. Enjoy!

Ned Bellavance and Ethan Banks think through VMware’s DRaaS offering, pondering the pros and cons of automation disaster recovery & business continuity. Sounds great, but are you testing regularly? What’s the failback process after the disaster is over? For more information, see VMware’s entire presentation at Cloud Field Day 7 #CFD7 .https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLinuRwpnsHaeLHjWwAB8GJKOMa6RNRqqs Listen to the […]

The post Automating Disaster Recovery Is Risky Business – Day Two Cloud Podcast Video appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Mat Jovanovic decided to follow my lead and migrate his blog from Blogger to Hugo, using Docsy theme, AWS Amplify as the CI/CD pipeline, and AWS S3 as the hosting platform.

Nice job… but he did way more than that - he documented the whole process, including tool selection, setup, and Blogger migration.

Thank you Mat! Every time I see someone publishing blog posts about open-source tools on Medium I’ll send them a link to your blog (with a comment “this is how you should blog about open-source solutions").

Ethan Banks and Ned Bellavance discuss moving VMware workloads with the VMware HCX. Do you want this? Don’t you really want to move work between Kubernetes clusters instead? Wait…was that a stupid question? It kind of was, but it kind of wasn’t. Kubernetes & containers are not simple drop-in replacements for VMware & virtual machines. […]

The post Moving Workloads With VMware HCX – Day Two Cloud Podcast Video appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Ethan Banks and Ned Bellavance consider VMware Cloud on AWS now that a couple of years have gone by since the service launched. Is it really cloud yet, or just VMware in a colo alongside AWS? It’s really both. For more information, see VMware’s entire presentation at Cloud Field Day 7 #CFD7.https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLinuRwpnsHaeLHjWwAB8GJKOMa6RNRqqs Hear the full […]

The post VMC On AWS Is More Cloud Like All The Time – Day Two Cloud Podcast Video appeared first on Packet Pushers.