RE: Programmers with network engineering skills
Noon Silk said: Just a practical comment here; part of your problem may be offering c and php together. I don't want to start a war, but I know that at the very least all the c programmers I know would considered php to be ... horribly offensive. So, maybe seperating out these two roles (c and php programming) will help you. It is definitely true (speaking as a programmer, C# for several years) that seeing +PHP would instantly turn me off. Further, I'm sure that almost anyone who is still programming in c these days would have the level of networking knowledge you care about (and can train on top of). PHP tends to mesh well with things like perl programmers. It is basically a scripting language. Anyone using D ?
Re: dns and software, was Re: Reliable Cloud host ?
On Feb 27, 2012, at 9:45 PM, Mark Andrews wrote: getaddrinfo was designed to be extensible as was struct addrinfo. Part of the problem with TTL is not data sources used by getaddrinfo have TTL information. Additionally for many uses you want to reconnect to the same server rather than the same name. Note there is nothing to prevent a getaddrinfo implementation maintaining its own cache though if I was implementing such a cache I would have a flag to to force a refresh. Sorry if I wasn't clear... My point to Bill was that we should be using calls that don't have TTL information (GAI/GNI in their default forms). That we don't need to abuse connect() to achieve that. That if people use GAI/GNI(), then, any brokenness is system-wide brokenness in the system's resolver library and should be addressed there. Owen
Re: dns and software, was Re: Reliable Cloud host ?
On Tue, Feb 28, 2012 at 12:45 AM, Mark Andrews ma...@isc.org wrote: getaddrinfo was designed to be extensible as was struct addrinfo. Part of the problem with TTL is not [all] data sources used by getaddrinfo have TTL information. Hi Mark, By the time getaddrinfo replaced gethostbyname, NIS and similar systems were on their way out. It was reasonably well understood that many if not most of the calls would return information gained from the DNS. Depending on how you look at it, choosing not to propagate TTL knowledge was either a belligerent choice to continue disrespecting the DNS Time To Live or it was fatalistic acceptance that the DNS TTL isn't and would not become functional at the application level. Still works fine deeper in the query system, timing out which server holds the records though. Additionally for many uses you want to reconnect to the same server rather than the same name. The SRV record was designed to solve that whole class of problems without damaging the operation of the TTL. No one uses it. It's all really very unfortunate. The recipe for SOHO multihoming, the end of routing table bloat and IP roaming without pivoting off a home base all boils down to two technologies: (1) a layer 4 protocol that can dynamically rebind to the layer 3 IP address the same way IP uses ARP to rebind to a changing ethernet MAC and (2) a DNS TTL that actually works so that the DNS supports finding a connection's current IP address. Regards, Bill Herrin -- William D. Herrin her...@dirtside.com b...@herrin.us 3005 Crane Dr. .. Web: http://bill.herrin.us/ Falls Church, VA 22042-3004
RE: Programmers with network engineering skills
Owen, I can only say it is my opinion, based on some years of experience and working with people who have come from both sides. I have seen more people successfully move from programming to networking than the reverse. Ralph Brandt Communications Engineer HP Enterprise Services Telephone +1 717.506.0802 FAX +1 717.506.4358 Email ralph.bra...@pateam.com 5095 Ritter Rd Mechanicsburg PA 17055 -Original Message- From: Owen DeLong [mailto:o...@delong.com] Sent: Monday, February 27, 2012 5:14 PM To: david raistrick Cc: Brandt, Ralph; NANOG Subject: Re: Programmers with network engineering skills On Feb 27, 2012, at 12:31 PM, david raistrick wrote: On Mon, 27 Feb 2012, Owen DeLong wrote: I think you're more likely to find a network engineer with (possibly limited) programming skills. While I'll agree about the more likely, if I needed a coder who had a firm grasp of networking I'd rather teach a good coder networking, than try to teach the art and magic of good development to a network guy. Well, I won't call myself a hard-core coder, but, I think I have a reasonable grasp on the art and magic of good development. What I mostly lack is speed and efficiency in the language of choice for whatever project. I can write good code, it just takes me longer than it would take a hard-core coder. OTOH, having done both, I would say that I think you are not necessarily correct about which direction of teaching is harder. Yes, if you start with a network engineer that knows nothing about writing code or doesn't understand the principles of good coding, you're probably right. However, starting with a network engineer that can write decent code slowly, I think you will get a better result in most cases than if you try to teach network engineering to a hard-core coder that has only a minimal understanding of networking. I think it really comes down to which you need: a hardcore network engineer/architect who can hack up code, or a hardcore developer who has or can obtain enough of a grasp of networking fundementals and specifics to build you the software you need him to develop. I'm guessing that someone who needed a hard-core developer that could grasp fundamentals would have grabbed an existing coder and handed him a copy of Comer. The fact that this person posted to NANOG instead implies to me that he needs someone that has a better grasp than just the fundamentals. Of course I am speculating about that and I could be wrong. The ones who already know both ends extremely well are going to be -very- hard to find, but finding one who can learn enough of the other to accomplish what you need shouldn't be hard at all. Depends on what you need. However, I think it's faster to go from limited coding skills with a good basis in the fundamentals to usable development than to go from limited networking skills to a firm grasp on how networks behave in the real world. To the best of my knowledge, nothing but experience will teach you the latter. Even with 20+ years experience networks do still occasionally manage to surprise me. ...d (who is not exactly the former though I've played one for TV, and not at all the later) I am admittedly lost given the three choices as to which constitutes former or latter at this point. 1. Strong coder with limited networking 2. Strong networker with limited coding 3. Strong in both Owen Who is a strong network engineer Who has been a professional software engineer (though many years ago and my skills are rusty and out of date)
Call for updates: Native IPv6 access providers
Hi Folks, I would like to get more organizations on the Native IPv6 list: http://www.sixxs.net/faq/connectivity/?faq=native Thus, if you have updates and also new entries, do not hesitate to forward them to i...@sixxs.net. Please provide the list of countries that you are offering the service, the name of the organization/company, the website, the IPv6 prefixes involved, the type of link/technology and any kind of notes that may pertain to your offering. Of course, if you are in the planning phase and know that around date XYZ you are going to offer the service too this can be put in the Notes column too... Yes, this list does not include Datacenter offerings, as when you have a simple Ethernet/routed network it you should have been able to offer IPv6 ages ago... Thanks for the input! Greets, Jeroen
RE: Programmers with network engineering skills
Rodrick, give me the name of one of those firms. :) Ralph Brandt -Original Message- From: Rodrick Brown [mailto:rodrick.br...@gmail.com] Sent: Monday, February 27, 2012 6:13 PM To: A. Pishdadi Cc: NANOG Subject: Re: Programmers with network engineering skills On Feb 26, 2012, at 8:27 PM, A. Pishdadi apishd...@gmail.com wrote: Hello All, i have been looking for quite some time now a descent coder (c,php) who has a descent amount of system admin / netadmin experience. Doesn't necessarily need to be an expert at network engineering but being acclimated in understanding the basic fundamentals of networking. Understanding basic routing concepts, how to diagnose using tcpdump / pcap, understanding subnetting and how bgp works (not necessarily setting up bgp). I've posted job listings on the likes of dice and monster and have not found any good canidates, most of them ASP / Java guys. If anyone can point me to a site they might recommend for job postings or know of any consulting firms that might provide these services that would be greatly appreciated. Good Luck guys like these are being scooped up by large financial firms and hedgefunds and they don't come cheap ~$250k easy!
Re: Programmers with network engineering skills
The smaller more elite hedge funds are - Getco LLC, Knight Capital, SAC Capital Advisors, Jump Trading, Wolverine Trading, Chicago Trading, Citadel, Sun Trading A list of larger firms are here - http://www.nasdaqtrader.com/Trader.aspx?id=topliquidity The core skill sets most look for is core Linux, C/C++, multicast, multithreading, IPC, and low level kernel drivers. FPGA and CUDA is also becoming more relevant. Sent from my iPhone On Feb 28, 2012, at 8:23 AM, Brandt, Ralph ralph.bra...@pateam.com wrote: Rodrick, give me the name of one of those firms. :) Ralph Brandt -Original Message- From: Rodrick Brown [mailto:rodrick.br...@gmail.com] Sent: Monday, February 27, 2012 6:13 PM To: A. Pishdadi Cc: NANOG Subject: Re: Programmers with network engineering skills On Feb 26, 2012, at 8:27 PM, A. Pishdadi apishd...@gmail.com wrote: Hello All, i have been looking for quite some time now a descent coder (c,php) who has a descent amount of system admin / netadmin experience. Doesn't necessarily need to be an expert at network engineering but being acclimated in understanding the basic fundamentals of networking. Understanding basic routing concepts, how to diagnose using tcpdump / pcap, understanding subnetting and how bgp works (not necessarily setting up bgp). I've posted job listings on the likes of dice and monster and have not found any good canidates, most of them ASP / Java guys. If anyone can point me to a site they might recommend for job postings or know of any consulting firms that might provide these services that would be greatly appreciated. Good Luck guys like these are being scooped up by large financial firms and hedgefunds and they don't come cheap ~$250k easy!
Re: Reliable Cloud host ?
On Feb 27, 2012, at 2:53 PM, valdis.kletni...@vt.edu wrote: On Mon, 27 Feb 2012 14:02:04 EST, William Herrin said: The net result is that when you switch the IP address of your server, a percentage of your users (declining over time) will be unable to access it for hours, days, weeks or even years regardless of the DNS TTL setting. Amen brother. So just for grins, after seeing William's I set up a listener on an address that had an NTP server on it many moons ago. As in the machine was shut down around 2002/06/30 22:49 and we didn't re-assign the IP address ever since *because* it kept getting hit with NTP packets.. Yes, a decade ago. In the first 15 minutes, 234 different IP's have tried to NTP to that address. I hereby reject the principle that one can not renumber a host/name and move it. Certainly some people will see breakage. This is because their software is defective, sometimes in a critical way, other times in a way that is non-obvious. But I reject the idea that you can't move a service, or have one MX, DNS, etc.. host be down and have it be fatal without something else being SERIOUSLY broken. If you are right, nobody could ever renumber anything ever, nor take a service down ever in the most absolute terms. I've been involved in large scale DNS server renumbering/moving/whatnot. It's harder these days than it was in the past, but its feasible. I know those resolver addresses that have been retired still get queries from *very* broken hosts. Just because they're getting queries, doesn't mean they are expecting an answer, or will properly handle it. Sometimes you have to break the service worse for people to repair it. Look at the DCWG.org site and try to get an idea if you're infected. At some point those will go away. Doesn't mean those people aren't broken/infected and REQUIRE remediation. - Jared
Re: Programmers with network engineering skills
rant I would wholeheartedly agree with this, but I believe its worse than just that. I used to categorize myself as a full developer, now I'm slightly ashamed to be tainted with that brush since there's so many people using the term who don't know the first thing about programming. It used to be that when you were taught programming, you were taught concepts (when to use a for loop, while loop, Boolean algebra), then you built on the foundations by learning advanced concepts (data structures, how to program concurrently using semaphores etc etc), you would then pick some optional classes to make up for some non programming specific knowledge (networking, linux admin, etc etc). I now have a lot of friends who work in academia and they are worried by a decline (as am I when trying to hire new talent). Currently the teaching process is one of learning to program like a monkey, monkey see monkey do. People are no longer taught to think for themselves, but instead taught to program in a specific language (PHP, Java, rarely C or C++ any more, C#, or VB) and that is all they know. I don't believe this is a failing with the lecturers but with the fundamental change in attitudes to programming. One of the tests I give all interviewees is write a very short program in a language they have never ever used before ( personally I recommend http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainfuck ) since this gives people a chance to show they can program rather than being able to tell me I know PHP or I know C, suprisingly very few newer programmers can make it through, or even try it, because the concept of thinking for themselves is so last year. /rant On 27 February 2012 20:02:13, Brandt, Ralph wrote: Generalists are hard to come by these days. They are people who learn less and less about more and more till they know nothing about everything. People today are specializing in the left and right halves of the bytes They learn more and more about less and less till they know everything about nothing. And BTW, they are worthless unless you have five of them working on a problem because none of them know enough to fix it. Worse, you can replace the word five with fifty and it may be still true. I know of three of these, all gainfully employed at this time and could each find at least a couple jobs if they wanted. I am one, my son is two and a guy we worked with is the third. At one time (40 years ago) the mantra in IS was train for expertise, now it is hire for it. Somewhere there has to be a happy medium. I suggest this, find a good coder, not a mediocre who writes shit code but a good one who can think and learn and when you talk about branching out with his skill set he or she lights up. His first thing on site is take the A+ networking course. No, I do not sell the courses. But I have seen this kind of approach work when nothing else was. Ralph Brandt Communications Engineer HP Enterprise Services Telephone +1 717.506.0802 FAX +1 717.506.4358 Email ralph.bra...@pateam.com 5095 Ritter Rd Mechanicsburg PA 17055 -Original Message- From: A. Pishdadi [mailto:apishd...@gmail.com] Sent: Sunday, February 26, 2012 8:27 PM To: NANOG Subject: Programmers with network engineering skills Hello All, i have been looking for quite some time now a descent coder (c,php) who has a descent amount of system admin / netadmin experience. Doesn't necessarily need to be an expert at network engineering but being acclimated in understanding the basic fundamentals of networking. Understanding basic routing concepts, how to diagnose using tcpdump / pcap, understanding subnetting and how bgp works (not necessarily setting up bgp). I've posted job listings on the likes of dice and monster and have not found any good canidates, most of them ASP / Java guys. If anyone can point me to a site they might recommend for job postings or know of any consulting firms that might provide these services that would be greatly appreciated.
Re: BBC reports Kenya fiber break
On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 10:20:10AM -0800, virendra rode wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA256 On 02/27/2012 08:11 AM, Marshall Eubanks wrote: Is anyone seeing this ? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-17179544 East Africa's high-speed internet access has been severely disrupted after a ship dropped its anchor onto fibre-optic cables off Kenya's coast. The ship was reported to have dropped anchor while in a restricted or prohibited area. These areas are _EXTREMELY_ well marked on charts. I can't see it being anything other than human or mechanical error: not checking if the ship is in a no-anchorage area, or the anchor chain wildcat brake _and_ the anchor chain blocking device fail simultaneously, or watch officer totally mistakes the ship's location and orders the anchor to be let go. -- Mike Andrews, W5EGO mi...@mikea.ath.cx Tired old sysadmin
RE: Programmers with network engineering skills
William Herrin [mailto:b...@herrin.us] On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 3:22 PM, Owen DeLong o...@delong.com wrote: On Feb 27, 2012, at 12:02 PM, Brandt, Ralph wrote: Generalists are hard to come by these days. I think you're more likely to find a network engineer with (possibly limited) programming skills. I wish. For the past three months I've been trying to find a network engineer with a deep TCP/IP protocol understanding, network security expertise, some Linux experience, minor programming skill with sockets and a TS/SCI clearance. The clearance is killing me. The two generalists didn't have a clearance and the cleared applicants are programmers or admins but never both. Hey now...the time from zero to TS/SCI has gone from over half a decade to a mere quarter decade. You can totally pay these guys to sit around doing drudge work while their skills atrophy in the interim. Of course, if you need a poly on top, add some more time and stir continually while applying heat. Jamie
Re: Programmers with network engineering skills
+1 on both. Senior network guys learn programming/scripting as a way to automate configuration and deal with large amounts of data. It's an enhancement for us and most network people are willing to expand their programming skills given the time. On the other hand there are way too many jobs where programmers can just be programmers for many of them to be interested in expanding their networking skills even if they have prior experience. If they become interested in the hardware world they usually go toward systems administrator and OS's. Some of them are big enough geeks to want to learn both or all three, but those are few and far between. It's very likely that such programmers frequent this list so hopefully I won't get flamed for posting this. EIther way it's just semantics, but it is generally easier to find a network guy that wants to learn how to program or get better at it than to find a programmer who is dying to learn about networking. Not sure if I agree with the opinion about generalists. There are alot of people who view technology as both a job and a hobby and become experts in what pays their bills and then slowly learn something about everything via osmosis. There are alot of people that never saw a book or trade rag they didn't like. 2012/2/27 Owen DeLong o...@delong.com I think you're more likely to find a network engineer with (possibly limited) programming skills. That's certainly where I would categorize myself. Owen On Feb 27, 2012, at 12:02 PM, Brandt, Ralph wrote: Generalists are hard to come by these days. They are people who learn less and less about more and more till they know nothing about everything. People today are specializing in the left and right halves of the bytes They learn more and more about less and less till they know everything about nothing. And BTW, they are worthless unless you have five of them working on a problem because none of them know enough to fix it. Worse, you can replace the word five with fifty and it may be still true. I know of three of these, all gainfully employed at this time and could each find at least a couple jobs if they wanted. I am one, my son is two and a guy we worked with is the third. At one time (40 years ago) the mantra in IS was train for expertise, now it is hire for it. Somewhere there has to be a happy medium. I suggest this, find a good coder, not a mediocre who writes shit code but a good one who can think and learn and when you talk about branching out with his skill set he or she lights up. His first thing on site is take the A+ networking course. No, I do not sell the courses. But I have seen this kind of approach work when nothing else was. Ralph Brandt Communications Engineer HP Enterprise Services Telephone +1 717.506.0802 FAX +1 717.506.4358 Email ralph.bra...@pateam.com 5095 Ritter Rd Mechanicsburg PA 17055 -Original Message- From: A. Pishdadi [mailto:apishd...@gmail.com] Sent: Sunday, February 26, 2012 8:27 PM To: NANOG Subject: Programmers with network engineering skills Hello All, i have been looking for quite some time now a descent coder (c,php) who has a descent amount of system admin / netadmin experience. Doesn't necessarily need to be an expert at network engineering but being acclimated in understanding the basic fundamentals of networking. Understanding basic routing concepts, how to diagnose using tcpdump / pcap, understanding subnetting and how bgp works (not necessarily setting up bgp). I've posted job listings on the likes of dice and monster and have not found any good canidates, most of them ASP / Java guys. If anyone can point me to a site they might recommend for job postings or know of any consulting firms that might provide these services that would be greatly appreciated.
Re: Reliable Cloud host ?
On Tue, Feb 28, 2012 at 9:02 AM, Jared Mauch ja...@puck.nether.net wrote: On Feb 27, 2012, at 2:53 PM, valdis.kletni...@vt.edu wrote: On Mon, 27 Feb 2012 14:02:04 EST, William Herrin said: The net result is that when you switch the IP address of your server, a percentage of your users (declining over time) will be unable to access it for hours, days, weeks or even years regardless of the DNS TTL setting. Amen brother. So just for grins, after seeing William's I set up a listener on an address that had an NTP server on it many moons ago. As in the machine was shut down around 2002/06/30 22:49 and we didn't re-assign the IP address ever since *because* it kept getting hit with NTP packets.. Yes, a decade ago. In the first 15 minutes, 234 different IP's have tried to NTP to that address. I hereby reject the principle that one can not renumber a host/name and move it. I reject the idea that you can't move a service, or have one MX, DNS, etc.. host be down and have it be fatal without something else being SERIOUSLY broken. If you are right, nobody could ever renumber anything ever, nor take a service down ever in the most absolute terms. Something else IS seriously broken. Several something elses actually: 1. DNS TTL at the application boundary, due in part to... 2. Pushing the name to layer 3 address mapping process up from layer 4 to layer 7 where each application has to (incorrectly) reinvent the process, and... 3. A layer 4 protocol which overloads the layer 3 address as an inseverable component of its transport identifier. Even stuff like SMTP which took care to respect the DNS TTL in its own standards gets busted at the back end: too many antispam process components rely on the source IP address, crushing large scale servers that suddenly appear, transmitting large amounts of email from a fresh IP address. Shockingly enough we have a strongly functional network despite this brokenness. But, it's broken all the same and renumbering is majorly impaired as a consequence. Renumbering in light of these issues isn't impossible. An overlap period is required in which both old and new addresses are operable. The duration of that overlap period is not defined by the the protocol itself. Rather, it varies with the tolerable level or residual brokenness, literally how many nines of users should be operating on the new address before the old address can go away. Regards, Bill Herrin -- William D. Herrin her...@dirtside.com b...@herrin.us 3005 Crane Dr. .. Web: http://bill.herrin.us/ Falls Church, VA 22042-3004
Re: Programmers with network engineering skills
While what you say is true (heck, I'm one of them), my point is that a great many network engineers have relatively strong programming backgrounds and if you could convince one of them to go back to writing code (sufficiently interesting project and/or right $$) you'd probably have better luck than finding a programmer that has networking skills. Owen On Feb 28, 2012, at 5:18 AM, Brandt, Ralph wrote: Owen, I can only say it is my opinion, based on some years of experience and working with people who have come from both sides. I have seen more people successfully move from programming to networking than the reverse. Ralph Brandt Communications Engineer HP Enterprise Services Telephone +1 717.506.0802 FAX +1 717.506.4358 Email ralph.bra...@pateam.com 5095 Ritter Rd Mechanicsburg PA 17055 -Original Message- From: Owen DeLong [mailto:o...@delong.com] Sent: Monday, February 27, 2012 5:14 PM To: david raistrick Cc: Brandt, Ralph; NANOG Subject: Re: Programmers with network engineering skills On Feb 27, 2012, at 12:31 PM, david raistrick wrote: On Mon, 27 Feb 2012, Owen DeLong wrote: I think you're more likely to find a network engineer with (possibly limited) programming skills. While I'll agree about the more likely, if I needed a coder who had a firm grasp of networking I'd rather teach a good coder networking, than try to teach the art and magic of good development to a network guy. Well, I won't call myself a hard-core coder, but, I think I have a reasonable grasp on the art and magic of good development. What I mostly lack is speed and efficiency in the language of choice for whatever project. I can write good code, it just takes me longer than it would take a hard-core coder. OTOH, having done both, I would say that I think you are not necessarily correct about which direction of teaching is harder. Yes, if you start with a network engineer that knows nothing about writing code or doesn't understand the principles of good coding, you're probably right. However, starting with a network engineer that can write decent code slowly, I think you will get a better result in most cases than if you try to teach network engineering to a hard-core coder that has only a minimal understanding of networking. I think it really comes down to which you need: a hardcore network engineer/architect who can hack up code, or a hardcore developer who has or can obtain enough of a grasp of networking fundementals and specifics to build you the software you need him to develop. I'm guessing that someone who needed a hard-core developer that could grasp fundamentals would have grabbed an existing coder and handed him a copy of Comer. The fact that this person posted to NANOG instead implies to me that he needs someone that has a better grasp than just the fundamentals. Of course I am speculating about that and I could be wrong. The ones who already know both ends extremely well are going to be -very- hard to find, but finding one who can learn enough of the other to accomplish what you need shouldn't be hard at all. Depends on what you need. However, I think it's faster to go from limited coding skills with a good basis in the fundamentals to usable development than to go from limited networking skills to a firm grasp on how networks behave in the real world. To the best of my knowledge, nothing but experience will teach you the latter. Even with 20+ years experience networks do still occasionally manage to surprise me. ...d (who is not exactly the former though I've played one for TV, and not at all the later) I am admittedly lost given the three choices as to which constitutes former or latter at this point. 1.Strong coder with limited networking 2.Strong networker with limited coding 3.Strong in both Owen Who is a strong network engineer Who has been a professional software engineer (though many years ago and my skills are rusty and out of date)
Re: Programmers with network engineering skills
This problem is not limited to programming. Education in general has moved from teaching conceptual knowledge re-inforced by practical examples and exercises to teaching methodological and/or procedural knowledge without any effort to convey concepts. It's much like the difference between teaching a man to buy a fish using cash vs. teaching a man more generalized economic skills and money management. In the former case, you get a man who can eat fish as long as he still has some cash. In the latter case, you get a man who can keep cash coming in and use it to obtain a varied diet and other things he may want. Today, the indoctrination mills (hard to call them education centers at this point) churn out people who are good at repeating the same process and solving the same problems over and over. Unfortunately, when faced with a problem that doesn't look like something from their text book, they either become completely lost or they take the hammer approach (when the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail). I'm not sure how to solve this. Teaching methodologically is much much faster than teaching conceptually and the endemic lack of patience makes it hard to get people to sit still long enough to learn conceptually. Owen On Feb 28, 2012, at 6:03 AM, John Mitchell wrote: rant I would wholeheartedly agree with this, but I believe its worse than just that. I used to categorize myself as a full developer, now I'm slightly ashamed to be tainted with that brush since there's so many people using the term who don't know the first thing about programming. It used to be that when you were taught programming, you were taught concepts (when to use a for loop, while loop, Boolean algebra), then you built on the foundations by learning advanced concepts (data structures, how to program concurrently using semaphores etc etc), you would then pick some optional classes to make up for some non programming specific knowledge (networking, linux admin, etc etc). I now have a lot of friends who work in academia and they are worried by a decline (as am I when trying to hire new talent). Currently the teaching process is one of learning to program like a monkey, monkey see monkey do. People are no longer taught to think for themselves, but instead taught to program in a specific language (PHP, Java, rarely C or C++ any more, C#, or VB) and that is all they know. I don't believe this is a failing with the lecturers but with the fundamental change in attitudes to programming. One of the tests I give all interviewees is write a very short program in a language they have never ever used before ( personally I recommend http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainfuck ) since this gives people a chance to show they can program rather than being able to tell me I know PHP or I know C, suprisingly very few newer programmers can make it through, or even try it, because the concept of thinking for themselves is so last year. /rant On 27 February 2012 20:02:13, Brandt, Ralph wrote: Generalists are hard to come by these days. They are people who learn less and less about more and more till they know nothing about everything. People today are specializing in the left and right halves of the bytes They learn more and more about less and less till they know everything about nothing. And BTW, they are worthless unless you have five of them working on a problem because none of them know enough to fix it. Worse, you can replace the word five with fifty and it may be still true. I know of three of these, all gainfully employed at this time and could each find at least a couple jobs if they wanted. I am one, my son is two and a guy we worked with is the third. At one time (40 years ago) the mantra in IS was train for expertise, now it is hire for it. Somewhere there has to be a happy medium. I suggest this, find a good coder, not a mediocre who writes shit code but a good one who can think and learn and when you talk about branching out with his skill set he or she lights up. His first thing on site is take the A+ networking course. No, I do not sell the courses. But I have seen this kind of approach work when nothing else was. Ralph Brandt Communications Engineer HP Enterprise Services Telephone +1 717.506.0802 FAX +1 717.506.4358 Email ralph.bra...@pateam.com 5095 Ritter Rd Mechanicsburg PA 17055 -Original Message- From: A. Pishdadi [mailto:apishd...@gmail.com] Sent: Sunday, February 26, 2012 8:27 PM To: NANOG Subject: Programmers with network engineering skills Hello All, i have been looking for quite some time now a descent coder (c,php) who has a descent amount of system admin / netadmin experience. Doesn't necessarily need to be an expert at network engineering but being acclimated in understanding the basic fundamentals of networking. Understanding basic routing concepts,
Re: Programmers with network engineering skills
On Monday, February 27, 2012 07:53:07 PM William Herrin wrote: .../SCI clearance. The clearance is killing me. The two generalists didn't have a clearance and the cleared applicants are programmers or admins but never both. I just about spewed my chai tea seeing 'SCI' and 'generalist' in the same post... isn't that mutually exclusive?
Re: Programmers with network engineering skills
Mike Hale wrote: If you're located in a major city, I'm sure you can find a community college that has a networking certificate program you can send your developer to, along with an in-house training program. Oh come on!!!1 Investing in your employee by sending them out to courses, for crying out loud, that's way too practical and effective to even consider. And to add insult to injury you suggest a low cost alternative such as a community college. If an employer was going to do such an outrageous thing as sending an employee to a course at least let it be an overpriced corporate course. Gees. /sarcasm -- Earthquake Magnitude: 3.0 Date: Tuesday, February 28, 2012 19:17:34 UTC Location: Northern California Latitude: 40.2860; Longitude: -124.3183 Depth: 19.90 km
Re: Programmers with network engineering skills
On Monday, February 27, 2012 05:14:00 PM Owen DeLong wrote: Who is a strong network engineer Who has been a professional software engineer (though many years ago and my skills are rusty and out of date) Owen, you nailed it here. Even the ACM recognizes that a 'Software Engineer' and a 'Computer Scientist' are different animals (ACM recognizes five 'computer related' degree paths with unique skill maps: Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Services, and Information Technology; see https://www.acm.org/education/curricula-recommendations for more details). A true 'network engineer' will have a different mindset and different focus than a 'Computer Scientist' who has all the theoretical math skills that a Computer Scientist needs (a reply to one of my recent posts mentioned that math, and was somewhat derogatory about engineers and timeliness, but I digress). Coding and development can bridge across the differences; but it is very useful to understand some of the very basic differences in mindset, and apply that to the position being sought. It boils down to whether the OP wants strong engineering skills with the accompanying mindset, or strong CS skills with the accompanying mindset. Given the other clearance issues, I would be more inclined to say that the OP would want a 'Software Engineer' with some network engineering skills rather than a CS grad with some network guy skills. It's a different animal, and software engineering teaches change control and configuration management at a different depth than the typical CS track will do (and that sort of thing would be required in such a cleared environment). On the flip side, that same 'Software Engineer' isn't nearly as steeped in CS fundamentals of algorithms and the associated math.
Re: Reliable Cloud host ?
On Feb 28, 2012, at 10:22 AM, William Herrin wrote: On Tue, Feb 28, 2012 at 9:02 AM, Jared Mauch ja...@puck.nether.net wrote: On Feb 27, 2012, at 2:53 PM, valdis.kletni...@vt.edu wrote: On Mon, 27 Feb 2012 14:02:04 EST, William Herrin said: The net result is that when you switch the IP address of your server, a percentage of your users (declining over time) will be unable to access it for hours, days, weeks or even years regardless of the DNS TTL setting. Amen brother. So just for grins, after seeing William's I set up a listener on an address that had an NTP server on it many moons ago. As in the machine was shut down around 2002/06/30 22:49 and we didn't re-assign the IP address ever since *because* it kept getting hit with NTP packets.. Yes, a decade ago. In the first 15 minutes, 234 different IP's have tried to NTP to that address. I hereby reject the principle that one can not renumber a host/name and move it. I reject the idea that you can't move a service, or have one MX, DNS, etc.. host be down and have it be fatal without something else being SERIOUSLY broken. If you are right, nobody could ever renumber anything ever, nor take a service down ever in the most absolute terms. Something else IS seriously broken. Several something elses actually: 1. DNS TTL at the application boundary, due in part to... DNS TTL shouldn't make it to the application boundary... 2. Pushing the name to layer 3 address mapping process up from layer 4 to layer 7 where each application has to (incorrectly) reinvent the process, and... But they don't have to... They can simply use getaddrinfo()/getnameinfo() and let the OS libraries do it. The fact that some applications choose to use their own resolvers instead of system libraries is what is broken. 3. A layer 4 protocol which overloads the layer 3 address as an inseverable component of its transport identifier. Even stuff like SMTP which took care to respect the DNS TTL in its own standards gets busted at the back end: too many antispam process components rely on the source IP address, crushing large scale servers that suddenly appear, transmitting large amounts of email from a fresh IP address. I think this is orthogonal to DNS TTL issues. Shockingly enough we have a strongly functional network despite this brokenness. But, it's broken all the same and renumbering is majorly impaired as a consequence. In my experience, the biggest hurdle to renumbering has nothing to do with DNS, DNS TTLs, respect or failure to respect them, etc. In my experience the biggest renumbering challenges come from the number of configuration files which contain your IP addresses yet are not under your control. VPNs (the configuration at the far side of the VPN) Firewalls (vendors, clients, etc. that have put your IP addresses into exceptions) Router configurations (vendors, clients, etc. that have special routing policy to reach you) etc. These are the things that make renumbering hard. The DNS stuff is usually fairly trivial to work around with a little time and planning. Renumbering in light of these issues isn't impossible. An overlap period is required in which both old and new addresses are operable. That's desirable even if you have a 5 second TTL and everyone did honor it. The duration of that overlap period is not defined by the the protocol itself. Rather, it varies with the tolerable level or residual brokenness, literally how many nines of users should be operating on the new address before the old address can go away. There is some truth to that. The combination of applications having their own (broken) resolver libraries and operating systems that provide even more broken resolvers (thanks, Redmond) has made this a bigger challenge than it should be. The ideal solution is to go back to using the OS resolver libraries and fix them. Best of luck actually achieving that. Owen
Re: Reliable Cloud host ?
On Tue, 28 Feb 2012, Owen DeLong wrote: But they don't have to... They can simply use getaddrinfo()/getnameinfo() and let the OS libraries do it. The fact that some applications choose to use their own resolvers instead of system libraries is what is broken. Not always true - firewall software, for example, generally requires IP addresses in their rules (ipfw, pfsense, iptables, at least a few years ago) and for validly sane reasons (even some of our best kernel guys were not crazy enough to change that for ipfw). Proxy software that supports high connection rates and connection churn generally prefer to cache the IP address internally because OS resolvers and the caches they read from just can't keep up [except in specificly well designed systems - which proxy developers can't expect blow joe to know how to do]. A stress test tool I'm working with just had to be modified for exactly that reason (and because adding more caches in front of AWS semiauthorative caches (due to split horizon) wouldn't solve anything. a short TTL is a short TTL is a short TTL). Some of those proxy developers claim that within the chrootwhatchamajiggy that their socket handling code runs they don't have access to the resolvers - so they have to store them at startup (see haproxy). -- david raistrickhttp://www.netmeister.org/news/learn2quote.html dr...@icantclick.org http://www.expita.com/nomime.html
Re: Programmers with network engineering skills
On Tue, Feb 28, 2012 at 11:21 AM, Lamar Owen lo...@pari.edu wrote: On Monday, February 27, 2012 07:53:07 PM William Herrin wrote: .../SCI clearance. The clearance is killing me. The two generalists didn't have a clearance and the cleared applicants are programmers or admins but never both. I just about spewed my chai tea seeing 'SCI' and 'generalist' in the same post... isn't that mutually exclusive? There's a difference between the TS/SCI clearance - and SCI compartmentalization security model for secure projects or information - and whether you need a generalist programmer / network programmer to solve the problem within the compartment or a specialist. One can have very generalist problems within a very narrowly defined security compartment. One of my main hobbies, if done as a day job, would require TS/SCI clearance plus an additional level; it requires about 8 or 9 major scientific and engineering disciplines to master. -- -george william herbert george.herb...@gmail.com
Re: Programmers with network engineering skills
John Mitchell wrote: rant I would wholeheartedly agree with this, but I believe its worse than teaching process is one of learning to program like a monkey, monkey see monkey do. People are no longer taught to think for themselves, but instead taught to program in a specific language (PHP, Java, rarely C or C++ any more, C#, or VB) and that is all they know. I don't believe this is a failing with the lecturers but with the fundamental change in attitudes to programming. The story of Mel comes to mind (one of my favourite): http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/story-of-mel.html http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/R/Real-Programmer.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainfuck ) since this gives people a chance to show they can program rather than being able to tell me I know PHP or I know C, suprisingly very few newer programmers can I think someone being able to quickly understand brainfuck and write usable code in it may be smart, but I don't think it's necessarily a sure sign of a potentially productive employee that fits well in the team. Greetings, Jeroen -- Earthquake Magnitude: 3.5 Date: Tuesday, February 28, 2012 20:15:32 UTC Location: Channel Islands region, California Latitude: 33.9042; Longitude: -119.4195 Depth: 8.60 km
Re: dns and software, was Re: Reliable Cloud host ?
On Tue, Feb 28, 2012 at 4:06 PM, Mark Andrews ma...@isc.org wrote: DNS TTL works. Applications that don't honour it arn't a indication that it doesn't work. Mark, If three people died and the building burned down then the sprinkler system didn't work. It may have sprayed water, but it didn't *work*. Regards, Bill Herrin -- William D. Herrin her...@dirtside.com b...@herrin.us 3005 Crane Dr. .. Web: http://bill.herrin.us/ Falls Church, VA 22042-3004
RE: Programmers with network engineering skills
I would hope that the working with the team aspect would have been have been handled BEFORE you spend time on this. Let HR do it, then check if they did it right because they screw it up at times. I have been overridden twice in hiring decisions over the years by my boss. Both of them lived to regret that action. Both were unsuitable because the person had character and personality flaws that made them unsuitable for any job except working more than 20 miles from Ted Kaminski. Ralph Brandt Communications Engineer HP Enterprise Services Telephone +1 717.506.0802 FAX +1 717.506.4358 Email ralph.bra...@pateam.com 5095 Ritter Rd Mechanicsburg PA 17055 -Original Message- From: Jeroen van Aart [mailto:jer...@mompl.net] Sent: Tuesday, February 28, 2012 4:05 PM To: NANOG list Subject: Re: Programmers with network engineering skills John Mitchell wrote: rant I would wholeheartedly agree with this, but I believe its worse than teaching process is one of learning to program like a monkey, monkey see monkey do. People are no longer taught to think for themselves, but instead taught to program in a specific language (PHP, Java, rarely C or C++ any more, C#, or VB) and that is all they know. I don't believe this is a failing with the lecturers but with the fundamental change in attitudes to programming. The story of Mel comes to mind (one of my favourite): http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/story-of-mel.html http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/R/Real-Programmer.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainfuck ) since this gives people a chance to show they can program rather than being able to tell me I know PHP or I know C, suprisingly very few newer programmers can I think someone being able to quickly understand brainfuck and write usable code in it may be smart, but I don't think it's necessarily a sure sign of a potentially productive employee that fits well in the team. Greetings, Jeroen -- Earthquake Magnitude: 3.5 Date: Tuesday, February 28, 2012 20:15:32 UTC Location: Channel Islands region, California Latitude: 33.9042; Longitude: -119.4195 Depth: 8.60 km
Re: FCoE/CNA Deployment w/ Nexus 5K, HP 580s, QLogic
On 2/28/12 2:55 AM, David Swafford wrote: Yeah, our vendors epically failed here! Were these QLogic 2400s or 2500s by any chance? https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/F15/FEDORA-2012-1863 dn
Time Warner Cable issues in Ohio ?
We're seeing some strange issues with our fiber connection to TWC in Ohio. Intermittent packet loss to/from some IPs. It gets as specific as from a certain IP outside our network, packets to a.b.c.10 are fine, but pings to a.b.c.50 (same subnet of same netblock) lose ~75% of the packets. Likewise, from one of our IPs, connections are fine to a particular remote host, but not to another host on the same network. Connections to/from some other IPs (and some whole networks) are totally fine. It almost seems that some piece of gear somewhere is barfing on packets that have a particular set of bits in the source and/or destination address. We have manually failed over to a backup connection, and are 100% fine now. I just want to see if anyone has seen anything similar, or has any info. I am on hold now waiting for someone at TWC. thanks, -Randy
Re: Time Warner Cable issues in Ohio ?
Sounds very much like an issue with a link aggregation. Seen this a couple of times with various carriers...apparently monitoring lag's isnt a top priority nowadays. Try to find out which hop is causing the problems (do multiple traceroute's or use mtr on affected and unaffected servers) and drop TWC a mail. Am Dienstag, den 28.02.2012, 18:22 -0500 schrieb Randy Carpenter: We're seeing some strange issues with our fiber connection to TWC in Ohio. Intermittent packet loss to/from some IPs. It gets as specific as from a certain IP outside our network, packets to a.b.c.10 are fine, but pings to a.b.c.50 (same subnet of same netblock) lose ~75% of the packets. Likewise, from one of our IPs, connections are fine to a particular remote host, but not to another host on the same network. Connections to/from some other IPs (and some whole networks) are totally fine. It almost seems that some piece of gear somewhere is barfing on packets that have a particular set of bits in the source and/or destination address. We have manually failed over to a backup connection, and are 100% fine now. I just want to see if anyone has seen anything similar, or has any info. I am on hold now waiting for someone at TWC. thanks, -Randy
Alaska peering
Hi I have read there was a discussion in 2010 regarding an IX in Alaska and whether it existed. seems like the most logical point to get to Alaska is Seattle. Is that still the case? Is there any peering point in Alaska? please contact me offlist if you know some colo / Internet service provider there. thanks. mehmet
Re: Time Warner Cable issues in Ohio ?
On Feb 28, 2012, at 15:22, Randy Carpenter rcar...@network1.net wrote: We're seeing some strange issues with our fiber connection to TWC in Ohio. Intermittent packet loss to/from some IPs. It gets as specific as from a certain IP outside our network, packets to a.b.c.10 are fine, but pings to a.b.c.50 (same subnet of same netblock) lose ~75% of the packets. Likewise, from one of our IPs, connections are fine to a particular remote host, but not to another host on the same network. Connections to/from some other IPs (and some whole networks) are totally fine. It almost seems that some piece of gear somewhere is barfing on packets that have a particular set of bits in the source and/or destination address. LACP somewhere with a partial link failure? -- Pete
Re: FCoE/CNA Deployment w/ Nexus 5K, HP 580s, QLogic
The full SKU of the original cards was QLE8242-CU-CK (dual port copper). The replacements were the same, but SR instead of CU. Here's a quick link of detail on these cards -- http://www.qlogic.com/Resources/Documents/DataSheets/Adapters/Datasheet_8200_Series_Adapters.pdf . The copper cables/SFPs were Cisco's SFP-H10GB-CU5M and SFP-H10GB-CU3M, which are listed on QLogic's list of approved cables: http://www.qlogic.com/Resources/Documents/LineCards/Copper_Cables_Support_Matrix_Line_Card.pdf . I had a comment regarding the TCO of a Nexus 5548 w/ full SR SFPs vs. copper and yes, this is a significant cost increase, so be aware of that! Hopefully you're not paying retail for them :-), even w/ our discount it was substantial. David. On Tue, Feb 28, 2012 at 5:38 PM, David Newman dnew...@networktest.comwrote: On 2/28/12 2:55 AM, David Swafford wrote: Yeah, our vendors epically failed here! Were these QLogic 2400s or 2500s by any chance? https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/F15/FEDORA-2012-1863 dn
Re: Programmers with network engineering skills
Jamie Bowden wrote: Hey now...the time from zero to TS/SCI has gone from over half a decade to a mere quarter decade. You can totally pay these guys to sit around doing drudge work while their skills atrophy in the interim. Of course, if you need a poly on top, add some more time and stir continually while applying heat. I didn't know what TS/SCI exactly stood for. So I did some thorough research (read: wikipedia, so if I am wrong please correct me :-) and I found this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._security_clearance_terms#SCI_eligibility In general, employees do not publish the individual compartments for which they are cleared. While this information is not classified, specific compartment listings may reveal sensitive information when correlated with an individual's resume. Therefore, it is sufficient to declare that a candidate possesses a TS/SCI clearance with a polygraph. That sparked my interest. Did I miss something? One can lie about TS/CSI clearance and be believed as long as one can fool a lie detector? How safe is that? That strikes me as a bit odd. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygraph#Validity Polygraphy has little credibility among scientists.[22][23] Despite claims of 90-95% validity by polygraph advocates, and 95-100% by businesses providing polygraph services,[non-primary source needed] critics maintain that rather than a test, the method amounts to an inherently unstandardizable interrogation technique whose accuracy cannot be established -- Earthquake Magnitude: 4.7 Date: Tuesday, February 28, 2012 23:18:51 UTC Location: Iran-Iraq border region Latitude: 32.4895; Longitude: 47.1147 Depth: 10.20 km
Re: dns and software, was Re: Reliable Cloud host ?
In message CAP-guGXK3WQGPLpmnVsnM0xnnU8==4zONK=uwtlkywudua6...@mail.gmail.com, William Herrin writes: On Tue, Feb 28, 2012 at 4:06 PM, Mark Andrews ma...@isc.org wrote: DNS TTL works. =A0Applications that don't honour it arn't a indication th= at it doesn't work. Mark, If three people died and the building burned down then the sprinkler system didn't work. It may have sprayed water, but it didn't *work*. Not enough evidence to say if it worked or not. Sprinkler systems are designed to handle particular classes of fire, not every fire. A 0 TTL means use this information for this transaction. We don't tear down TCP sessions on DNS TTL going to zero. If one really want to deprecate addresses we need something a lot more complicated than A and records in the DNS. We need stuff like use this address for new transactions, this address is going away soon, don't use it unless no other works. One also has to use multiple addresses at the same time. Mark -- Mark Andrews, ISC 1 Seymour St., Dundas Valley, NSW 2117, Australia PHONE: +61 2 9871 4742 INTERNET: ma...@isc.org
RE: Programmers with network engineering skills
That sparked my interest. Did I miss something? One can lie about TS/CSI clearance and be believed as long as one can fool a lie detector? How safe is that? That strikes me as a bit odd. Yeah, you missed something. TS/SCI w/polygraph means that you underwent a Special Background Investigation *and* you passed a polygraph during an interview which is generally used to detect if you are being deceptive in your answers to questions, not so much to find the truth. And you can lie about the TS/SCI until it comes time to actually be cleared for work. The powers that be will discover your lie before you ever emerge from the leper colony and your hopes of ever getting one at that point are headed down the drain.
Re: Alaska peering
Hello Mehmet , On Tue, 28 Feb 2012, Mehmet Akcin wrote: Hi I have read there was a discussion in 2010 regarding an IX in Alaska and whether it existed. seems like the most logical point to get to Alaska is Seattle. Is that still the case? Is there any peering point in Alaska? please contact me offlist if you know some colo / Internet service provider there. thanks. mehmet Would you be so kind as to summerise any finding that you receive ? Tia , JimL -- +--+ | James W. Laferriere | SystemTechniques | Give me VMS | | NetworkSystem Engineer | 3237 Holden Road | Give me Linux | | bab...@baby-dragons.com | Fairbanks, AK. 99709 | only on AXP | +--+
Re: [Outages-discussion] Recent outage in Australia affecting Telstra
On 2/25/2012 2:46 AM, Jay Ashworth wrote: - Original Message - From: Gert Doering g...@greenie.muc.de One of Telstra's downstream customers, a smaller ISP called Dodo, accidentally announced the global table to Telstra (or perhaps a very large portion of it.) Enough of it to cause major disruption. This is good. There is a chance that Telstra will learn from it, and do proper customer-facing filters now. OTOH, there also is a chance that Telstra lawyers will just sue the customer, and not change anything... Perhaps. I am not familiar with Australian jurisprudence, but the US there is the doctrine of Last Clear Chance[1]... and the work necessary on Telstra's part to avoid this problem is a) well known, b) arguably considered best practice for a company in their field, and c) not disproportionately onorous for them to have undertaken... so even if they sue, it's not at all a clear cut case for them to win. Cheers, -- jra [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_clear_chance Being a relatively recent immigrant to Australia from the US, I can say that, although I have no background in Australian legal shenanigans, they aren't quite the litigious bastards we Americans tend to be. Most of the commentary on AUSNOG tended towards that was foolish, hopefully they learn from that. I suspect the chances of there being any legal fallout from this are slim.
Re: [Outages-discussion] Recent outage in Australia affecting Telstra
I would probably suggest that there wouldn't be any. *Skeeve Stevens, CEO* eintellego Pty Ltd ske...@eintellego.net ; www.eintellego.net Phone: 1300 753 383 ; Fax: (+612) 8572 9954 Cell +61 (0)414 753 383 ; skype://skeeve facebook.com/eintellego twitter.com/networkceoau ; www.linkedin.com/in/skeeve PO Box 7726, Baulkham Hills, NSW 1755 Australia The Experts Who The Experts Call Juniper - Cisco – Brocade - IBM On Wed, Feb 29, 2012 at 06:01, Gary Buckmaster gary.buckmas...@digitalpacific.com.au wrote: On 2/25/2012 2:46 AM, Jay Ashworth wrote: - Original Message - From: Gert Doering g...@greenie.muc.de One of Telstra's downstream customers, a smaller ISP called Dodo, accidentally announced the global table to Telstra (or perhaps a very large portion of it.) Enough of it to cause major disruption. This is good. There is a chance that Telstra will learn from it, and do proper customer-facing filters now. OTOH, there also is a chance that Telstra lawyers will just sue the customer, and not change anything... Perhaps. I am not familiar with Australian jurisprudence, but the US there is the doctrine of Last Clear Chance[1]... and the work necessary on Telstra's part to avoid this problem is a) well known, b) arguably considered best practice for a company in their field, and c) not disproportionately onorous for them to have undertaken... so even if they sue, it's not at all a clear cut case for them to win. Cheers, -- jra [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_clear_chance Being a relatively recent immigrant to Australia from the US, I can say that, although I have no background in Australian legal shenanigans, they aren't quite the litigious bastards we Americans tend to be. Most of the commentary on AUSNOG tended towards that was foolish, hopefully they learn from that. I suspect the chances of there being any legal fallout from this are slim.
