Books for the NOC guys...

[Robert E. Seastrom]

This morning I went digging for a book to recommend that someone in
our NOC read in order to understand at a high level how Internet
infrastructure works (bgp, igps, etc) and discovered that the old
standbys (Huitema, Halabi, Perlman) have all not been updated in a
decade or so.

On the one hand, they're all still quite relevant since there hasn't
been anything really earth-shattering in that department, but they are
all going to be lean to nonexistent on stuff like IPv6 and NLRI negotiation.

So, what are you having your up-and-coming NOC staff read?

Thanks,

-r

Re: Books for the NOC guys...

[Dobbins, Roland]

On Apr 2, 2010, at 7:09 PM, Robert E. Seastrom wrote:

> So, what are you having your up-and-coming NOC staff read?









---
Roland Dobbins  // 

Injustice is relatively easy to bear; what stings is justice.

-- H.L. Mencken

Re: Books for the NOC guys...

[Michael Dillon]

> So, what are you having your up-and-coming NOC staff read?

In an attempt to wean them off of unmanageable PERL scripts


There are tons of tutorials and articles on the web, often with links
to other useful stuff



And let's not forget all of the NANOG presentations. Sometimes the slides are
quite good on their own but if not, the audio is there too.


I would encourage them to download PDFs, videos and websites for future
reference and to share with colleagues.

Also, set up a wiki, and ask them all to record any useful bits of info there
and to track Recent Changes every week or so to see what colleagues are
sharing.

--Michael Dillon

RE: Books for the NOC guys...

[Express Web Systems]

> So, what are you having your up-and-coming NOC staff read?

While not specifically a NOC book, we find that it lays a great foundation
to build from (if, perhaps, a bit basic in certain areas):

Network Warrior by Gary A. Donahue

http://www.amazon.com/Network-Warrior-Everything-need-wasnt/dp/0596101511/

This is a great book with an easy to read style.

Tom Walsh

Re: Books for the NOC guys...

[John Kristoff]

On Fri, 02 Apr 2010 08:09:29 -0400
"Robert E. Seastrom"  wrote:

> This morning I went digging for a book to recommend that someone in
> our NOC read in order to understand at a high level how Internet
> infrastructure works (bgp, igps, etc) and discovered that the old
> standbys (Huitema, Halabi, Perlman) have all not been updated in a
> decade or so.
[...]
> So, what are you having your up-and-coming NOC staff read?

That is an excellent question Rob.  I still recommend and prefer to use
Radia's book when I teach networking classes.  There are lots of books
that regurgitate the specs or spend a fair amount of time on the
core algorithms and mechanisms, but few go into the "why" and "what if"
like she does that makes it so exceptional and particularly relevant
from an operations perspective.

I often will play a clip or two from past meetings like NANOG and
discuss that in class to make up for the lack of reference and
discussion material elsewhere.  Perhaps point them at a few of your
favorite presentations on a particular operationally relevant topic
you want them to know more about?

John

Re: Books for the NOC guys...

[Valdis . Kletnieks]

On Fri, 02 Apr 2010 13:48:48 BST, Michael Dillon said:
> > So, what are you having your up-and-coming NOC staff read?
> 
> In an attempt to wean them off of unmanageable PERL scripts

There is not, and there never will be, a useful programming language that
makes it the least bit difficult to write totally abominable creeping-horror
unmaintainable code in.

The ability of a programmer to write totally obtuse code is entirely
orthogonal to the choice of implementation language.  Some people just don't
have good taste, and will produce train wrecks in any language. Remember that
it's possible to write Fortran-IV code in any language. :)

Unless you teach them stuff like "Document the sources and expected types of
input data", "add useful comments that explain your choice of algorithms rather
than  "a++; /* Add one to A */", and "If the language supports operator
overloading, don't be a bozo and abuse it", the code will be unmaintainable.


pgpE3Du9vFmnG.pgp
Description: PGP signature

Re: Books for the NOC guys...

[Larry Sheldon]

On 4/2/2010 08:39, valdis.kletni...@vt.edu wrote:
> On Fri, 02 Apr 2010 13:48:48 BST, Michael Dillon said:
>>> So, what are you having your up-and-coming NOC staff read?
>>
>> In an attempt to wean them off of unmanageable PERL scripts
> 
> There is not, and there never will be, a useful programming language that
> makes it the least bit difficult to write totally abominable creeping-horror
> unmaintainable code in.
> 
> The ability of a programmer to write totally obtuse code is entirely
> orthogonal to the choice of implementation language.  Some people just don't
> have good taste, and will produce train wrecks in any language. Remember that
> it's possible to write Fortran-IV code in any language. :)
> 
> Unless you teach them stuff like "Document the sources and expected types of
> input data", "add useful comments that explain your choice of algorithms 
> rather
> than  "a++; /* Add one to A */", and "If the language supports operator
> overloading, don't be a bozo and abuse it", the code will be unmaintainable.

"Teach them".  Train them.  Have standards.  Enforce them (pay according
to compliance).

What a concept!  We did that using Autocoder and COBOL.

What next?  "Manage" them?  Is that even legal?
-- 
Democracy: Three wolves and a sheep voting on the dinner menu.

Requiescas in pace o email
Ex turpi causa non oritur actio
Eppure si rinfresca

ICBM Targeting Information:  http://tinyurl.com/4sqczs
http://tinyurl.com/7tp8ml

RE: Books for the NOC guys...

[Scott Berkman]

I just show them this:

http://warriorsofthe.net/

-Scott

-Original Message-
From: Larry Sheldon [mailto:larryshel...@cox.net] 
Sent: Friday, April 02, 2010 9:46 AM
To: nanog@nanog.org
Subject: Re: Books for the NOC guys...

On 4/2/2010 08:39, valdis.kletni...@vt.edu wrote:
> On Fri, 02 Apr 2010 13:48:48 BST, Michael Dillon said:
>>> So, what are you having your up-and-coming NOC staff read?
>>
>> In an attempt to wean them off of unmanageable PERL scripts
> 
> There is not, and there never will be, a useful programming language that
> makes it the least bit difficult to write totally abominable
creeping-horror
> unmaintainable code in.
> 
> The ability of a programmer to write totally obtuse code is entirely
> orthogonal to the choice of implementation language.  Some people just
don't
> have good taste, and will produce train wrecks in any language. Remember
that
> it's possible to write Fortran-IV code in any language. :)
> 
> Unless you teach them stuff like "Document the sources and expected types
of
> input data", "add useful comments that explain your choice of algorithms
rather
> than  "a++; /* Add one to A */", and "If the language supports operator
> overloading, don't be a bozo and abuse it", the code will be
unmaintainable.

"Teach them".  Train them.  Have standards.  Enforce them (pay according
to compliance).

What a concept!  We did that using Autocoder and COBOL.

What next?  "Manage" them?  Is that even legal?
-- 
Democracy: Three wolves and a sheep voting on the dinner menu.

Requiescas in pace o email
Ex turpi causa non oritur actio
Eppure si rinfresca

ICBM Targeting Information:  http://tinyurl.com/4sqczs
http://tinyurl.com/7tp8ml

Re: Books for the NOC guys...

[Brad Fleming]

On Apr 2, 2010, at 7:09 AM, Robert E. Seastrom wrote:



This morning I went digging for a book to recommend that someone in
our NOC read in order to understand at a high level how Internet
infrastructure works (bgp, igps, etc) and discovered that the old
standbys (Huitema, Halabi, Perlman) have all not been updated in a
decade or so.

On the one hand, they're all still quite relevant since there hasn't
been anything really earth-shattering in that department, but they are
all going to be lean to nonexistent on stuff like IPv6 and NLRI  
negotiation.


So, what are you having your up-and-coming NOC staff read?

Thanks,

-r

It kind of depends on what you want from your NOC folk and (at least a  
little bit) which "level" NOC people need the resource.


In addition to the ones already listed, we encourage Tier 1 and Tier 2  
people to read and understand these two books:

T1: A Survival Guide
http://www.amazon.com/T1-Survival-Guide-Matthew-Gast/dp/0596001274/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1270216284&sr=8-1

Network Maintenance and Troubleshooting Guide
http://www.amazon.com/Network-Maintenance-Troubleshooting-Guide-Solutions/dp/0321647416/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1270216655&sr=1-1

We find these are both pretty solid resources, especially for our Tier  
1 folks. Since much of what they eventually deal with are Layer 1  
problems, having resources that focus on Layer 1 helps get their mind  
moving that direction. If we have a routing problem, that generally  
needs to get bumped up anyway since it means somethings misconfigured  
or a routing protocol is acting up.

--
Brad Fleming

Re: Books for the NOC guys...

[Jens Link]

"Robert E. Seastrom"  writes:

> So, what are you having your up-and-coming NOC staff read?



I think it's quite good and covers many "modern" topics. One drawback:
It mentions ethereal and not wireshark. At the time of writing ethereal
must have been dead for about 2 years.

Jens
-- 
-
| Foelderichstr. 40   | 13595 Berlin, Germany| +49-151-18721264 |
| http://blog.quux.de | jabber: jensl...@guug.de | ---  | 
-

Re: Books for the NOC guys...

[Eliot Lear]

 On 4/2/10 2:09 PM, Robert E. Seastrom wrote:

So, what are you having your up-and-coming NOC staff read?


Practice of System and Network Administration by Limoncelli, Hogan, and 
Challup.  I may be biased, being married to Hogan.


Eliot

Re: Books for the NOC guys...

[Suresh Ramasubramanian]

The Limoncelli etc book is brilliant.

There's phil smith and barry greene's old "Cisco ISP Essentials" too.
 Very good if somewhat outdated

And then there's this if you just want security -
http://www.amazon.com/Router-Security-Strategies-Securing-Network/dp/1587053365/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1270223489&sr=1-1

On Fri, Apr 2, 2010 at 9:06 PM, Eliot Lear  wrote:
>  On 4/2/10 2:09 PM, Robert E. Seastrom wrote:
>>
>> So, what are you having your up-and-coming NOC staff read?
>
> Practice of System and Network Administration by Limoncelli, Hogan, and
> Challup.  I may be biased, being married to Hogan.



-- 
Suresh Ramasubramanian (ops.li...@gmail.com)

Re: Books for the NOC guys...

[Bryan Irvine]

On Fri, Apr 2, 2010 at 6:02 AM, Express Web Systems
 wrote:
>> So, what are you having your up-and-coming NOC staff read?
>
> While not specifically a NOC book, we find that it lays a great foundation
> to build from (if, perhaps, a bit basic in certain areas):
>
> Network Warrior by Gary A. Donahue
>
> http://www.amazon.com/Network-Warrior-Everything-need-wasnt/dp/0596101511/
>
> This is a great book with an easy to read style.
>

+1 Network Warrior.

-B

Re: Books for the NOC guys...

[Lamar Owen]

On Friday 02 April 2010 11:36:53 am Eliot Lear wrote:
> Practice of System and Network Administration by Limoncelli, Hogan, and
> Challup.  I may be biased, being married to Hogan.

+1 on PSNA.  I like it as much for its non-technical content as for its 
technical content  (a similar book, by Limncelli, "Time Management for System 
Administrators" is also on my shelf, with great non-technical content, and 
should be a must-read for any technical personnel, IMO).

+1 also on Network Warrior, although not for everything.

I also have 'Cisco Network Professional's Advanced Internetworking Guide' by 
Patrick J. Conlan, published by Sybex.  Comes with the full text on CD in PDF 
form, too.  The URL is pretty long, so use the search on sybex.com to find it.  
Here's the ToC:

1. Enterprise Network Design.
2. Switching.
3. Spanning Tree Protocol (STP).
4. Routing Concepts and Distance Vector Routing Protocols.
5. Advanced Distance Vector Protocols.
6. Link State Routing Protocols.
7. Exterior Routing Protocols.
8. Multicast.
9. IP Version 6.
10. Redundancy Protocols.
11. WAN and Teleworker Connections.
12. Virtual Private Networks (VPN).
13. Device Security.
14. Switch Security.
15. Cisco IOS Firewall.
16. Cisco IOS IPS.
17. Voice.
18. DiffServ Quality of Service (QOS).
19. Wireless Devices and Topologies.
20. Wireless Management and Security. 

Which pretty much, I think, covers the bases asked about in the OP.  The 
copyright is May 2009, so it's not too bad out of date.

Re: Books for the NOC guys...

[Nick Hilliard]

On 02/04/2010 14:39, valdis.kletni...@vt.edu wrote:
> On Fri, 02 Apr 2010 13:48:48 BST, Michael Dillon said:
>>> So, what are you having your up-and-coming NOC staff read?
>>
>> In an attempt to wean them off of unmanageable PERL scripts
> 
> There is not, and there never will be, a useful programming language that
> makes it the least bit difficult to write totally abominable creeping-horror
> unmaintainable code in.

+n

"Whatever language you write in, your task as a programmer is to do the
best you can with the tools at hand. A good programmer can overcome a poor
language or a clumsy operating system, but even a great programming
environment will not rescue a bad programmer". (Kernighan and Pike)

Although language zealots are loth to admit it, certain languages are
better suited to some things than to others.  Perl's syntactical support
for text processing are second to none, but for web stuff, it's hideous.
PHP stinks on the command line and text processing, yet its web integration
makes it a good candidate for small web projects.  Shell scripts are
designed specifically for command line tool management, pipes and all that
sort of thing, and just because other languages support popen() and system,
that doesn't necessarily make them good choices for stuff which involves
unix scripting.  I write readable and maintainable code in all three.

Java elicits strong reactions.  No doubt, you can use Java plumbing
libraries to scale to impressively large systems. On the other hand, Cisco
Configuration Professional (the new SDM) provides an excellent example of
how badly you can screw up a good idea by using the wrong tool - I'm not
interesting in using or recommending a desktop tool which takes 2 minutes
to start on a fast computer.

You can write unimaginably awful code in python and ruby, and irrtoolset's
code is a prime example of what you can do with c++.  Yet, we all
acknowledge that python, ruby and c++ are high quality languages.

In short: less zealotry, more pragmatism and a realisation that each
language has its own strengths and weaknesses.  Bad code is bad code in any
language.

Nick

Re: Books for the NOC guys...

[Michael Thomas]

On 04/02/2010 10:43 AM, Nick Hilliard wrote:


In short: less zealotry, more pragmatism and a realisation that each
language has its own strengths and weaknesses.  Bad code is bad code in any
language.


All true, but I'd still say there's a special rung in hell for bad perl.

Mike

Re: Books for the NOC guys...

[Chris Adams]

Once upon a time, Michael Thomas  said:
> All true, but I'd still say there's a special rung in hell for bad perl.

Ehh, bad perl is still more readable than good APL.  At least I can
reformat the perl! :-)
-- 
Chris Adams 
Systems and Network Administrator - HiWAAY Internet Services
I don't speak for anybody but myself - that's enough trouble.

RE: Books for the NOC guys...

[Howard C. Berkowitz]

Well, speaking as one who wrote an ISP-specific, although not NOC-specific book 
about a
decade ago, it doesn't seem as if there is a commercial motivation to update 
them. For the
record, it's _Building Service Provider Networks_ (Wiley, 2001), and I'm proud 
of it.

Nevertheless, I'm not opposed to trying to create updated open-source guidance. 
 I do a
good deal of work with http://en.citizendium.org, a real-name Wiki that is 
trying to reach
critical mass. Anybody interested in collaborating?  

I'd actually started more on RPSL and peering than first-tier ops, but hadn't 
done
anything more for lack of activity there. Certainly, I could port some of my 
NANOG
tutorials, not that I have the PPT for many but just the PDF.

> -Original Message-
> From: Robert E. Seastrom [mailto:r...@seastrom.com]
> Sent: Friday, April 02, 2010 8:09 AM
> To: nanog@nanog.org
> Subject: Books for the NOC guys...
> 
> 
> This morning I went digging for a book to recommend that someone in
> our NOC read in order to understand at a high level how Internet
> infrastructure works (bgp, igps, etc) and discovered that the old
> standbys (Huitema, Halabi, Perlman) have all not been updated in a
> decade or so.
> 
> On the one hand, they're all still quite relevant since there hasn't
> been anything really earth-shattering in that department, but they are
> all going to be lean to nonexistent on stuff like IPv6 and NLRI negotiation.
> 
> So, what are you having your up-and-coming NOC staff read?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> -r
> 

Re: Books for the NOC guys...

[Bryan Irvine]

On Fri, Apr 2, 2010 at 10:53 AM, Chris Adams  wrote:
> Once upon a time, Michael Thomas  said:
>> All true, but I'd still say there's a special rung in hell for bad perl.
>
> Ehh, bad perl is still more readable than good APL.  At least I can
> reformat the perl! :-)

In my experience bad perl usually consists of using system() a lot to
run shell commands and read the input. Creative well-written perl, now
there's something unreadable and unmaintainable!  :-)



-B

Re: Books for the NOC guys...

[Ray Sanders]

It's the same level reserved for child molesters and people who talk at 
the theater...


Michael Thomas wrote:

On 04/02/2010 10:43 AM, Nick Hilliard wrote:


In short: less zealotry, more pragmatism and a realisation that each
language has its own strengths and weaknesses.  Bad code is bad code 
in any

language.


All true, but I'd still say there's a special rung in hell for bad perl.

Mike



No virus found in this incoming message.
Checked by AVG - www.avg.com 
Version: 9.0.800 / Virus Database: 271.1.1/2785 - Release Date: 04/01/10 23:32:00


  



--
-"Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future."
-Niels Bohr
--
Ray Sanders
Linux Administrator
Village Voice Media
Office: 602-744-6547
Cell: 602-300-4344

Re: Books for the NOC guys...

[Stefan]

Aside from the ones already mentioned, troubleshooting books are a
great asset, also. Here are some of my favorites:

http://www.amazon.com/Network-Analysis-Troubleshooting-Scott-Haugdahl/dp/0201433192/

http://www.amazon.com/Troubleshooting-Campus-Networks-Practical-Protocols/dp/0471210137/

http://www.amazon.com/Network-Maintenance-Troubleshooting-Guide-Solutions/dp/0321647416/
<- just ordered the 2nd edition, after having browsed it at a friend

***Stefan Mititelu
http://twitter.com/netfortius
http://www.linkedin.com/in/netfortius



On Fri, Apr 2, 2010 at 9:02 AM, Express Web Systems
 wrote:
>> So, what are you having your up-and-coming NOC staff read?
>
> While not specifically a NOC book, we find that it lays a great foundation
> to build from (if, perhaps, a bit basic in certain areas):
>
> Network Warrior by Gary A. Donahue
>
> http://www.amazon.com/Network-Warrior-Everything-need-wasnt/dp/0596101511/
>
> This is a great book with an easy to read style.
>
> Tom Walsh
>
>
>

Re: Books for the NOC guys...

[Joel Jaeggli]

While not the stevens book,

"the illustrated network" isbn 978-0-12-374541-5 was a pretty good
attempt to do a modern version of the same. any book that attempts to
cover all layers of the stack is going to have it's limits, but it has
saved my bacon a couple of times now...

The author is normally a juniper press author and as a result the
examples that aren't done on freebsd or linux systems are done on junos
which is either a benifit or a drawback depending on your environment.

disclaimer, I did review it for content/accuracy, but wasn't compensated
for doing so.

joel

On 04/02/2010 05:09 AM, Robert E. Seastrom wrote:
> 
> This morning I went digging for a book to recommend that someone in
> our NOC read in order to understand at a high level how Internet
> infrastructure works (bgp, igps, etc) and discovered that the old
> standbys (Huitema, Halabi, Perlman) have all not been updated in a
> decade or so.
> 
> On the one hand, they're all still quite relevant since there hasn't
> been anything really earth-shattering in that department, but they are
> all going to be lean to nonexistent on stuff like IPv6 and NLRI negotiation.
> 
> So, what are you having your up-and-coming NOC staff read?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> -r
> 
> 
> 

Re: Books for the NOC guys...

[Michael Dillon]

>> In short: less zealotry, more pragmatism and a realisation that each
>> language has its own strengths and weaknesses.  Bad code is bad code in
>> any
>> language.
>
> All true, but I'd still say there's a special rung in hell for bad perl.

And it is exacerbated by the huge volume of bad PERL books out there and the
fact that entry level NOC monkeys often get the idea that PERL is cool and
therefore learn it as their first and only language without a lot of critical
thinking.

Also, please note that the original request was for books, or in other words
documents containing guidance. I supplied the name of such a document
providing guidance using Python.

If someone wanted to play the game and trump me, then they would
quote the title of another book, or at least a substantial website tutorial,
that uses another programming language.

--Michael Dillon

Re: Books for the NOC guys...

[Steven Bellovin]

On Apr 2, 2010, at 1:53 44PM, Chris Adams wrote:

> Once upon a time, Michael Thomas  said:
>> All true, but I'd still say there's a special rung in hell for bad perl.
> 
> Ehh, bad perl is still more readable than good APL.  At least I can
> reformat the perl! :-)
> -- 

Oh, I don't know about that -- you an often reformat APL, too.  Just because 
something can be written in one line doesn't mean it should be!

And bad APL -- well, that's produced either by people who are trying to be too 
clever, or who haven't grokked APL's array-as-a-whole philosophy, and try to 
use its (very poor) looping or conditional control flow primitives.  


--Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb

Re: Books for the NOC guys...

[Bill Stewart]

On Fri, Apr 2, 2010 at 8:36 AM, Eliot Lear  wrote:
>  On 4/2/10 2:09 PM, Robert E. Seastrom wrote:
>>
>> So, what are you having your up-and-coming NOC staff read?
>
> Practice of System and Network Administration by Limoncelli, Hogan, and
> Challup.  I may be biased, being married to Hogan.

Chalup with one L (though of course she didn't have that name when you
and I first met her...)




-- 

 Thanks; Bill

Note that this isn't my regular email account - It's still experimental so far.
And Google probably logs and indexes everything you send it.

Re: Books for the NOC guys...

[Lamar Owen]

On Friday 02 April 2010 04:08:03 pm Michael Dillon wrote:
> If someone wanted to play the game and trump me, then they would
> quote the title of another book, or at least a substantial website
> tutorial, that uses another programming language.

I wish I could reply to this yesterday  Then, I would have simply pointed 
to http://www.catb.org/~esr/intercal/intercal.ps.gz and let that hang out 
there for a while.  One of the finest examples of a write-only language.

Or, better yet, I could point you to a non-April 1st CGI programming example: 
http://www.fcc.gov/mb/audio/bickel/archive/colorit-fortran-get-cgi-example.txt

Please at least look at that last link even if you already know better than to 
read the PostScript document at the first link. Look at where the CGI example 
came from, and consider doing something like rancid in either of those two 
languages.  There is worse out there than perl.  Also consider that the second 
link was originally written for VAX/VMS.

I've personally used expect (and the tcl underpinnings) for a number of years, 
but I wouldn't call it very readable.  If you want to force people to write 
things that are readable, choose COBOL.  See 
http://theamericanprogrammer.com/books/books.cobol.shtml for a list of 
pertinent books.

Having said all that, I'll agree with Michael on using Python, as it is very 
readable even when you try to obfuscate it, thanks in no small part to the 
whole 'indentation is significant' design decision.

Re: Books for the NOC guys...

[Owen DeLong]

On Apr 2, 2010, at 8:10 AM, Jens Link wrote:

> "Robert E. Seastrom"  writes:
> 
>> So, what are you having your up-and-coming NOC staff read?
> 
> 
> 
> I think it's quite good and covers many "modern" topics. One drawback:
> It mentions ethereal and not wireshark. At the time of writing ethereal
> must have been dead for about 2 years.
> 
Heh.. GUIs they come and GUIs they go... tcpdump works forever.

Owen

Re: Books for the NOC guys...

[Adrian Chadd]

On Fri, Apr 02, 2010, Robert E. Seastrom wrote:

> So, what are you having your up-and-coming NOC staff read?

Since I thought this was worthwhile summarising, I've dumped
it on the mail topics page in the Wiki:

http://nanog.cluepon.net/index.php/MailTopics

I specifically left out the programming language related ranting.


Adrian

Re: Books for the NOC guys...

[Marty Anstey]

Nick Hilliard wrote:
> "PHP stinks on the command line and text processing"
>   
This is a bit of a broad sweeping statement! Can you elaborate on what
your definition of how PHP "stinks" in this context?

We have dozens of CLI scripts all written in PHP, some of which have
been running for years and never given us any grief. We specifically
chose PHP as the scripting language to standardize on to replace PERL
because it was simple to learn and extremely powerful.

I came from a PERL (and C/Pascal/Assembler) background so I found the
PHP language stylings a natural fit when I discovered it in 2001, and
have been using it for most of my scripting needs ever since. PHP adopts
a lot of "PERL-isms" which I find very comfortable.

Occasionally I do hear of someone deriding PHP, and naturally I would
like to hear their side of the story. Often, I find it is due to lack of
experience with PHP CLI scripting, or perhaps just PHP's capabilities in
general.

M

Re: Books for the NOC guys...

[Marty Anstey]

Max Gribov wrote:
> On 04/06/2010 01:17 PM, Marty Anstey wrote:
>> Nick Hilliard wrote:
>>   
>>> "PHP stinks on the command line and text processing"
>>>
>>>  
>> This is a bit of a broad sweeping statement! Can you elaborate on what
>> your definition of how PHP "stinks" in this context?
>>
>
> well, try to parse ~60mb csv file doing some simple tweaks to the
> input and then insert it into the database, and watch how much ram
> your script will use, as well as how long it will take vs perl..
> for me, it takes about 5 hours and eats up to 1gb of ram (configured
> memory limit for php for me)
>
>
Hi Max,

While I appreciate where you're coming from, I've never had that issue.
It sounds like you're trying to load the entire script into RAM and then
parse it. Regardless of the language you are using, you'll still
essentially get the same result.

> that said, php is awesome otherwise, been using it for last 2 years
> strictly in 'enterprise' deployment..
> id just say perl is faster and more efficient for batch scripts. 

I can't speak specifically to the performance differences for comparible
operations in PHP and PERL as I have never done a side-by-side
comparison myself. But FWIW, I have parsed multi-gigabyte files with PHP
on the command line and it's never been markedly "slow". Sure, it's not
pure C but it's never been so slow that i've thought - "heck, this would
be a lot faster with PERL"...

Just my $0.02...

Cheers,
-Marty

Re: Books for the NOC guys...

[Michael Thomas]

On 04/06/2010 11:05 AM, Marty Anstey wrote:

that said, php is awesome otherwise, been using it for last 2 years
strictly in 'enterprise' deployment..
id just say perl is faster and more efficient for batch scripts.


I can't speak specifically to the performance differences for comparible
operations in PHP and PERL as I have never done a side-by-side
comparison myself. But FWIW, I have parsed multi-gigabyte files with PHP
on the command line and it's never been markedly "slow". Sure, it's not
pure C but it's never been so slow that i've thought - "heck, this would
be a lot faster with PERL"...


One data point that I can speak to is the difference in parsing XML using
the expat library between python and PHP for very large files. Python was
quite a bit faster than PHP, but I can't recall the exact magnitude (2x? 10x?
it's been too long but it was pretty significant).

That said, performance is only one reason to use a language over others.
PHP programmers are probably 10x more plentiful than python programmers,
as another metric. So it very much depends on the larger picture.

Mike, who hasn't found the CLI interface to PHP particularly better or worse 
than others

Re: Books for the NOC guys...

[Robert E. Seastrom]

Marty Anstey  writes:

> Max Gribov wrote:
>> On 04/06/2010 01:17 PM, Marty Anstey wrote:
>>> Nick Hilliard wrote:
>>>   
 "PHP stinks on the command line and text processing"
>>>
>>> This is a bit of a broad sweeping statement! Can you elaborate on what
>>> your definition of how PHP "stinks" in this context?
>>
>> well, try to parse ~60mb csv file doing some simple tweaks to the
>> input and then insert it into the database, and watch how much ram
>> your script will use, as well as how long it will take vs perl..
>> for me, it takes about 5 hours and eats up to 1gb of ram (configured
>> memory limit for php for me)
>
> While I appreciate where you're coming from, I've never had that issue.
> It sounds like you're trying to load the entire script into RAM and then
> parse it. Regardless of the language you are using, you'll still
> essentially get the same result.

As it happens, the loadup script I wrote that parses ARIN bulk whois
dump data and loads it into an SQL database is both written in PHP and
about an order of magnitude faster than its predecessor which was
written by someone else in perl.

Helps that I knew enough to LOCK TABLES...  :-)

-r

Re: Books for the NOC guys...

[Andy Davidson]

On Fri, Apr 02, 2010 at 08:09:29AM -0400, Robert E. Seastrom wrote:
> This morning I went digging for a book to recommend that someone in
> our NOC read in order to understand at a high level how Internet
> infrastructure works

How to do comes automatically, *why* to do is the difference between
a good and great engineer.

Watching old nanog (and other country-nog) archives is good, going to
the actual meetings and meeting people is better, and developing a
culture of shared understanding and colaboration is golden.

I guess I mean, working out the what the "best way" to build a network
is rather than following an example..

If you do like dead trees, then capturing the spirit of what I mean
comes from older books like my (prized) "ISP Survival Guide" (Geoff
Huston).

My 2p.

Andy

Re: Books for the NOC guys...

[Joly MacFie]

I also grabbed the list http://isoc-ny.org/wiki/Networking

Thanks to all who contributed.

j


On Sat, Apr 3, 2010 at 6:52 AM, Adrian Chadd  wrote:

> On Fri, Apr 02, 2010, Robert E. Seastrom wrote:
>
> > So, what are you having your up-and-coming NOC staff read?
>
> Since I thought this was worthwhile summarising, I've dumped
> it on the mail topics page in the Wiki:
>
> http://nanog.cluepon.net/index.php/MailTopics
>
> I specifically left out the programming language related ranting.
>
>
> Adrian
>
>


-- 
---
Joly MacFie  218 565 9365 Skype:punkcast
WWWhatsup NYC - http://wwwhatsup.com
http://pinstand.com - http://punkcast.com
 Secretary - ISOC-NY - http://isoc-ny.org
---

Re: Books for the NOC guys...

[Adrian Chadd]

On Mon, Apr 26, 2010, Joly MacFie wrote:
> I also grabbed the list http://isoc-ny.org/wiki/Networking
> 
> Thanks to all who contributed.

Please feel free to add a link to the above url in the nanog wiki.
> 
> j
> 
> 
> On Sat, Apr 3, 2010 at 6:52 AM, Adrian Chadd  wrote:
> 
> > On Fri, Apr 02, 2010, Robert E. Seastrom wrote:
> >
> > > So, what are you having your up-and-coming NOC staff read?
> >
> > Since I thought this was worthwhile summarising, I've dumped
> > it on the mail topics page in the Wiki:
> >
> > http://nanog.cluepon.net/index.php/MailTopics
> >
> > I specifically left out the programming language related ranting.
> >
> >
> > Adrian
> >
> >
> 
> 
> -- 
> ---
> Joly MacFie  218 565 9365 Skype:punkcast
> WWWhatsup NYC - http://wwwhatsup.com
> http://pinstand.com - http://punkcast.com
>  Secretary - ISOC-NY - http://isoc-ny.org
> ---

-- 
- Xenion - http://www.xenion.com.au/ - VPS Hosting - Commercial Squid Support -
- $24/pm+GST entry-level VPSes w/ capped bandwidth charges available in WA -

Re: Books for the NOC guys...

[Naveen Nathan]

I was unable to register an acconut & edit the page. I would recommend
including the O'reilly BGP book by Iljitsch van Beijnum.

Under online stuff:

The TCP/IP guide, which is surprisingly thorough:
http://www.tcpipguide.com/


On Tue, Apr 27, 2010 at 11:11:07AM +0800, Adrian Chadd wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 26, 2010, Joly MacFie wrote:
> > I also grabbed the list http://isoc-ny.org/wiki/Networking
> > 
> > Thanks to all who contributed.
> 
> Please feel free to add a link to the above url in the nanog wiki.
> > 
> > j
> > 
> > 
> > On Sat, Apr 3, 2010 at 6:52 AM, Adrian Chadd  wrote:
> > 
> > > On Fri, Apr 02, 2010, Robert E. Seastrom wrote:
> > >
> > > > So, what are you having your up-and-coming NOC staff read?
> > >
> > > Since I thought this was worthwhile summarising, I've dumped
> > > it on the mail topics page in the Wiki:
> > >
> > > http://nanog.cluepon.net/index.php/MailTopics
> > >
> > > I specifically left out the programming language related ranting.
> > >
> > >
> > > Adrian
> > >
> > >
> > 
> > 
> > -- 
> > ---
> > Joly MacFie  218 565 9365 Skype:punkcast
> > WWWhatsup NYC - http://wwwhatsup.com
> > http://pinstand.com - http://punkcast.com
> >  Secretary - ISOC-NY - http://isoc-ny.org
> > ---
> 
> -- 
> - Xenion - http://www.xenion.com.au/ - VPS Hosting - Commercial Squid Support 
> -
> - $24/pm+GST entry-level VPSes w/ capped bandwidth charges available in WA -
> 
> 

-- 
Naveen Nathan

To understand the human mind, understand self-deception. - Anon

Re: Books for the NOC guys...

[Gadi Evron]

On 4/3/10 1:52 PM, Adrian Chadd wrote:

On Fri, Apr 02, 2010, Robert E. Seastrom wrote:


So, what are you having your up-and-coming NOC staff read?


Since I thought this was worthwhile summarising, I've dumped
it on the mail topics page in the Wiki:

http://nanog.cluepon.net/index.php/MailTopics

I specifically left out the programming language related ranting.


Can we create some instant web-poll to rank these books? I am sure many 
people would participate.


There are several free services online, or I can volunteer a wordpress 
installation with the relevant plugin.


Thanks,

Gadi.