In the context of BGP, a valley-free violation is when routing policy governing BGP path selection and advertisement breaks the valley-free policy. The valley-free routing policy basically ensures traffic doesn’t traverse unintended autonomous systems, usually a customer AS downstream from a service provider, and therefore an unintentional transit network. The extended metaphor of hills and valleys is used to describe how end customers with their own AS will advertise their prefixes “upstream” or “uphill” to their local service provider. These providers will then advertise those prefixes to th ..read more

I love the networking community, and I attribute much of my success as a network engineer, network architect, and now a technical marketer, to the interactions I’ve had with other network pros over the years. That’s meant interaction on Twitter, Reddit, the big conferences, and the small events like Tech Field Day. From those sprang up private Slack and Discord groups, the occasional iMessage or Google Hangouts group, and so on. That changed significantly during the pandemic. Both the large and small conferences, meetups, and even company events stopped altogether and didn’t come back for a fe ..read more

Here’s a short breakdown of MELT, which stands for metrics, events, logs, and traces. These are the four most basic data types used for network and system telemetry. There are other data types that are widely used and very useful in a robust observability solution, though I would argue some are just another form of one of these general data types. These data types are used in system monitoring in general, but are very valuable in observability. Metrics, events, logs, and traces have most commonly been the cornerstone of application and system observability, but today they also form key compone ..read more

I was a VAR network engineer for years. I worked on location in data centers and network closets to install network gear, perform various types of cutovers, and troubleshoot network problems. Even when I moved to a solutions architect role, I always kept several items with me at all times in my laptop bag when going on-site, just in case. Some items are obvious, and some I carried because I got burned when I didn’t have it with me that one time. If you’re a network engineer managing your own network or your customers’ network, here’s a list of 10 networking tools that you should consider keepi ..read more

Here’s a list of my favorite networking-focused events ranked with number 1 being the best. “Best” means a conference or event that either had a ton of relevant networking content for me personally or that helped me directly in my career (for example, I’ve never been focused on storage at all – therefore you won’t see those events that on my list). So if you’re in the networking field like me, check out these events and feel free to disagree in the comments or on the socials 7. ONUG ONUG would be higher on the list if I was writing this in 2014, but in recent days I feel this event has becom ..read more

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I’ve been in tech long enough to know what’s worked for me as far as growing my career as a network engineer. So looking at the networking industry today in early 2021 and looking back at what’s worked for me, I’d like to share five things I believe can help you take your career in tech to the next level. Number one. Start reading blogs.   Almost every day make the time to read good tech blogs. I don’t mean clickbait blog posts or an article on something you already know. Instead, find some good tech blogs relevant to your specific field that go into areas you’re not familiar with. Whethe ..read more

Intent Based Networking certainly became a popular term over the last couple years. I don’t hear about it much anymore in terms of new and upcoming tech, though. I hear the term being used almost as a side comment when vendors say things like, “oh yeah we do intent based networking – it’s built right into our GUI.” So after all the marketing hype, the buzzword bingo, and as much digital transformation as we can stomach, where are we with intent based networking in 2021? At one point I really thought IBN was quickly headed for the panacea of autonomous networking. Closed loop validation and rem ..read more

I guess I should start with a disclaimer. I don’t know if this is actually the best way to white balance a video in camera. All I know is that I’m an amateur, and I’ve struggled with nailing down the white balance on my videos for a while. After someone showed me this method, my white balance is almost perfect every time right out of the camera. Getting your white balance perfect is so important to getting a great image. Our eyes are really good at seeing if someone’s face is a little off, so getting the perfect tint and temperature along with the right mix of reds, greens, and blues, is super ..read more

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