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Setting Up Public-Private Keys For SSH Authentication

This post originally appeared on the Packet Pushers’ Ignition site on February 18, 2020.   The more pedantic in the tech community argue about the merits of public-private key authentication vs. simple password authentication when logging into an SSH host. I have no strong opinion regarding your security posture when using one vs. the other….

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Understanding OSPF Router ID (RID) Assignment

This post originally appeared on the Packet Pushers’ Ignition site on March 24, 2020. In both OSPFv2 (IPv4) and OSPFv3 (IPv6), the router ID (RID) is a 32-bit number assigned to the router. The RID must be unique within the OSPF network, as a RID provides a point of origin for link state advertisements (LSAs)….

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Formatted CLI Data Is Not Good Enough For Automation

If you’re learning to interact with Infrastructure as Code (IaC), you’ll need to get accustomed to structured data, which is different from formatted data you’re likely accuomsted to with the CLI. Here’s some examples of structured data to help you understand the difference.

Put In The Work

Would you like to stand out from your peers? Would you like to impress the people you work for, or perhaps the people you’d like to work for? Put in the work. Putting in the work to achieve a goal is a form of self-sacrifice. To get the thing you want, you need to give up something else.

Join The Packet Pushers For A Live Stream With Gluware June 28, 2022

We’re hosting the “Real World Enterprise Automation” live stream with sponsor Gluware on June 28, 2022. Gluware is a network automation vendor that’s especially good at taking your existing, multi-vendor network and adding automation to it. We’d like it if you’d register to attend this hour-or-so event in real-time via https://packetpushers.net/live. Thanks!

How To Reference Nested Python Lists & Dictionaries

This post originally appeared in the Packet Pushers’ Ignition site on March 10, 2020. When getting data back from API queries in Python, the data is often delivered in JSON format. Python libraries such as requests will convert that JSON data structure into a Python-native data structure you can work with. That Python data structure…

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Your First REST API Call In Python

This post originally appeared on the Packet Pushers’ Ignition site on June 10, 2020. Introduction In many automation scripts, you’ll be retrieving information via some sort of interface and then doing something with the data. The interface is often an API–application programmatic interface. For folks new to APIs, they might seem daunting, but they need…

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Is It Illegal To Be Called “Engineer” Without Having An Engineering Degree?

Some engineers are called engineers because they went through a rigorous process recognized in their industry. The stuff they do tends to affect lives, and so the title of engineer is not awarded until a bunch of other people agree it’s deserved. Engineers in those disciplines sometimes take exception to IT engineers being called such, as there is no industry-wide process one follows to become an IT engineer. So should we be disallowed from using the term?

Preempting Gray Failures With AI/ML

The network was definitely up, and had been up. There was nothing in the logs indicating link flaps, spanning-tree convergence events, or routing process adjacency changes. The packets had been, were presently, and presumably would forever be flowing. Flowing like a river. I was pondering this inaccurate version of reality because of an annoying ticket that wouldn’t go away…

Stable: GNS3 2.2.17 + VMware Fusion 12.1.0 + macOS 11.1 (Build 20C69)

Even with minor caveats, I seem to be in a better place with macOS 11.1 Big Sur versus macOS 10.15.7 Catalina. Big Sur is not a flawless experience for me yet, but I have hope it will become so as software makers have time to adjust to all of Apple’s changes. And I’ll take being able to run GNS3 labs without kernel panics as a big win.

Is Computing A Right?

Recently, the idea of a cloud computing service delivered as a public utility was pitched to me. The idea was that computing power made available to those who would otherwise be unable to afford it would be a societal good. For example, imagine an academic group that needs compute for a research project. Or municipalities that would benefit their citizenry by leveraging a cloud-as-utility.

Give The Network Designer That Came Before You A Break

When you take over a network as a technical lead, you often run into design elements that make you do a spit-take. They did WHAT? Really? Were they…stupid? Clueless? Stupid AND clueless? Maybe they were, but I argue that you should give those humans that came before you a break. You weren’t there. You don’t know what constraints they were operating under. Since you don’t know those things, it’s hard to pass fair judgement. Unfair judgement? Oh, yeah. All day long, and you can even feel righteous while doing so. Super smug.

Free Networking Icons For Diagrams

Behold these three different sets of free networking icons for your glorious diagrams! There’s something here for you whether you’re seeking vector graphics, JPG, PowerPoint, or Visio. And from all of us, thank you for documenting.

Don’t Become A Developer, But Use Their Tools

This post originally appeared in the October 1st 2020 issue of Human Infrastructure, a free newsletter from the Packet Pushers. If you’d like to get a weekly dose of commentary, links to tech blogs, and a few amusements, sign up here. A recurrent idea around network automation is that your future is as a software…

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SR(x)6 – Snake Oil Or Salvation?

It seems to me that point of SRv6 from a vendor perspective is to move metal and create a new platform ecosystem. Cisco and Juniper (and all of them) always need new income streams, and so they want to see SRv6 adopted. Here’s my logic.

Understanding Scale Computing HC3 Edge Fabric #TFD20

With HC3 Edge Fabric, Scale Computing has created a networking architecture that reduces the hardware requirement for the edge computing cluster. There’s one less switch to worry about. There are fewer Ethernet NIC ports required on the hosts. At the same time, Scale Computing isn’t wimping out on resiliency.

What I Want In A Root Cause Analysis Tool #TFD20

Your non-technical boss doesn’t pop by your desk and ask you why there are excessive OutDiscards accumulating on Et4/0/36. You get asked why the network is slow, or why the CRM application is down. Those questions are context. Does your root cause analysis software have any sense of that context?

Packet Walking Through A 128 Technology Network

128 Technology (128T) makes routers. But…they don’t make routers in the way you’d normally think of. Instead, a 128T network makes security and traffic engineering features first class citizens along with routing protocols and packet forwarding. Is 128T a solution for you? Read this detailed posted for network architects and engineers to find out!

Please Fill Out The 2019 Annual Audience Survey

Each year, the Packet Pushers publish a provocative, pithy (and privacy protected!) survey we ask the public to participate in. We’d appreciate it if you’d take a few minutes and fill it out. http://bit.ly/2JZzmo2

The Technology Case For Wi-Fi 6

Here’s a brief technical overview of Wi-Fi 6, also known as 802.11ax, to help get you up to speed and ask the right questions for when you consider an upgrade. We cover OFDMA, whether Wi-Fi 6 means faster speeds, power savings, and more.