Author Archives: networkingnerd

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About networkingnerd

Tom Hollingsworth, CCIE #29213, is a former network engineer and current organizer for Tech Field Day. Tom has been in the IT industry since 2002, and has been a nerd since he first drew breath.

Fast Friday – Mobility Field Day 4

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This week’s post is running behind because I’m out in San Jose enjoying great discussions from Mobility Field Day 4. This event is bringing a lot of great discussion to the community to get everyone excited for current and future wireless technologies. Some quick thoughts here with more ideas to come soon.

  • Analytics is becoming a huge driver for deployments. The more data you can gather, the better everything can be. When you start to include IoT as a part of the field you can see why all those analytics matter. You need to invest in a lot of CPU horsepower to make it all work the way you want. Which is also driving lots of people to build in the cloud to have access to what they need on-demand from an infrastructure side of things.
  • Spectrum is a huge problem and source of potential for wireless. You have to have access to spectrum to make everything work. 2.4 GHz is pretty crowded and getting worse with IoT. 5 GHz is getting crowded as well, especially with LAA being used. And the opening of the 6 GHz spectrum could be held up in political concerns. Are there new investigations that need to happen to find bands that can be used without causing friction?
  • The driver for technology has to be something other than desire. We have to build solutions and put things out there to make them happen. Because if we don’t we’re going to stuck with what we have for a long time. No one wants to move and reinvest without clear value. But clear value often doesn’t develop until people have already moved. Something has to break the logjam of hesitance. That’s the reason why we still need bold startups with new technology jumping out to make things work.

Tom’s Take

I know I’ll have more thoughts when I get back from this event, but wireless has become the new edge and that’s a very interesting shift. The more innovation we can drive there means the more capable we can make our clients and empower users.

Fast Friday- Black Hat USA 2019

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I just got back from my first Black Hat and it was an interesting experience. It was crazy to see three completely different security-focused events going on in town all at once. There was Black Hat, B-Sides Las Vegas, and DEFCON all within the space of a day or so of each other. People were flowing back and forth between them all and it was quite amazing.

A wanted to share a few quick thoughts about the event from my perspective being a first timer.

  • The show floor wasn’t as bit as VMworld or Cisco Live, but it was as big as it needed to be. Lots of companies that I’ve heard of, but several more that were new to me. That’s usually a good sign of lots of investment in the security space.
  • Speaking of which, I talked to quite a few companies about a variety of analytics, telemetry, and insider threat monitoring solutions. And almost all of them had a founder from Israel or someone that was involved in the cybersecurity areas of the IDF. That’s a pretty good track record for where the investment is going.
  • The Vegas booth gimmicks never change. I think I’ve spent too much time at Vegas conferences because I’m starting to recognize the magicians and other “performers” at the booths. I’m glad they can get some work but I don’t know if the companies realize that there needs to be some new blood out there.
  • I found it very different that you could print pretty much any name on your badge that you wanted. I saw a few El Chapos, Pablo Escobars, and even a generic “IT Buyer”. Consequently, people were a little curious about my Twitter badge flag. I guess the idea of announcing your identity to people is a bit strange at a security conference.
  • Being on the press list for the event meant that I got to see some cool briefings. But it also meant sorting through some things that didn’t make sense. And there there was the Quasi-Prime Number presentation spam that I got. I don’t go into much more detail other than to point you to this Twitter thread which is a comedy goldmine of the presentation referenced in said email. Thanks to @MalwareJake for pointing out the original thread and all the amazing comments about how the harmony of music can be an input into crypto randomization.
  • Lastly, I wish I would have had more time to go down and check out DEFCON. A lot of my friends that were in town were there and seemed to be having the time of their lives. DEFCON seems more in line with my Batman job instead of my Bruce Wayne job though. Guess I’ll have to take some vacation to check out DEFCON next year.

Ultimately, I had a great time checking out Black Hat. There were some parts that needed polish and some things about having 20,000+ in Vegas that I’m not keen on. But it’s a successful conference and likely will be one I attend in 2020. If for no other reason than to give my VPN a workout again!

 

Conference Packing – The Little Things

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It seems like conference season never really ends. Between RSA, Cisco Live, Black Hat, and VMworld, I’m always running around to something. I enjoy being able to meet new people and talk to companies at these events but I also find that a little bit of planning ahead helps immensely.

There’s always a lot of discussion from people about what to pack for a conference. There have been some great posts written about it, like this one from Bob McCouch in 2014. He definitely covers all the important stuff that people would want to know, such as comfortable shoes and a bag big enough to carry extra things just in case you come back with enough fidget spinners to sink an aircraft carrier.

However, I’ve found in recent years that the difference between just surviving a conference and really being prepared involves a few extra items I never thought I’d need to bring back when I first started doing this in 2006. Maybe it’s the Scoutmaster in me, but being prepared has gone from being a suggestion to a necessity. And here are a few of those little necessities that I have found I can’t live without.

First? Aid.

I’ve found that traveling with a first aid kit is a huge upgrade in Quality of Conference Life. I’m not talking about one of the crazy backpack-style ones that first responders carry. Or even the small plastic ones that you can find in a local department store that have everything under the sun. No, the best first aid kit is the one you pack yourself. So you know you have what you need and you know what you have.

For my first aid kit, I pack small:

  • 3-4 bandages. Preferred to be breathable (not plastic or cute)
  • Antibiotic ointment
  • Moleskin for blisters
  • Cotton balls
  • Small alcohol swab (for cleaning and drying out blisters)
  • Q-Tips or other cotton swabs
  • Cuticle scissors

It’s a simple kit but it works wonders. You can take care of minor cuts and scrapes, blisters (which are the bane of every conference), and other things like wound treatment. You can even use cotton balls as earplugs in a pinch. The rest is designed to travel light.

Note that I didn’t list any pain relievers in there. That’s because I separately carry a lot of ibuprofen in my bag to help with tired muscles after standing all day and headaches after waking up. I carry enough that it won’t easily fit in the Ziploc bag that I use for my travel kit. It’s also easier to access in my bag without having to go into another bag. Make your kit easy to use and easy to access so you can get to it when you need it.

Portable Power

It’s funny how we’ve come to depend so much on our mobile devices now. I’ve gone from not even caring if I left my Nokia phone in my room to not being able to function without a smart device or two on me at all times. That also means that I’ve become hyper aware of how long I’m going to be able to use my device. And in places where there are a lot of phones competing for signal or a lot of interference, you’re going to drain your device battery a lot faster.

The other issue is that modern devices have much bigger batteries than in the past. My iPhone XS has a battery thats almost 2,700 mAh. My iPad Pro battery is 8,100 mAh. The battery in a MacBook is almost as much as well. Which means you’re going to either need to be tied to a power outlet often or you need to carry a battery pack.

Most conference guides I’ve seen will tell you to bring at least one battery pack. Since I’m crazy prepared, I always have two. One of them is bigger and designed to provide power on a regular basis away from a power outlet. It’s usually something above 10,000 mAh that takes a while to charge when it’s fully depleted. I’m about to upgrade to a newer unit that has USB-C PD charging and delivery and can recharge all my devices more quickly. The Wirecutter has some great reviews of bigger power banks to recharge all kinds of devices.

I also still need to carry a smaller battery pack for just my phone, especially when I want to travel light. And since I’m trying to travel light I don’t want to carry any extra things, like cables. Normally, I try to have a USB-C, micro USB, and Lightning cable at all times to handle any charging needs. But if it’s after hours and I’m just looking to have my phone charged so it doesn’t die, all I need it a Lightning cable. I’ve been using this Ventev PowerCell 6010+ for the last year thanks to an awesome friend and it does exactly what I need it to do. It recharges my phone more than once and fits in my pocket. The Lightning cable is also attached so I don’t need to worry about anything dangling out of my pocket. And in a pinch it can give a little extra juice to my iPad. You should check them out if you just need something small and simple.

Can You Hear Me Now?

The final thing I pack in my kit that seems out of the ordinary is earplugs. Why? Well, it turns out that conferences are loud. Like, really loud. And that means that you can’t even hear yourself think sometimes. This is especially true if you end up going to the big closing event. This usually involves a DJ or a band playing as loud as possible. And, depending on where you’re sitting or standing you may not be able to hear them clearly for the ringing in your ears.

Likewise, the conference floor is often a jumbled mess of booths, music, and even once a marching band! You need to have some kind of way to block out the noise without completely drowning out what is going on around you. Yes, I know it’s really easy to pop in a set of earbuds or put on a pair of over-the-ear headphones while you walk around. But in my line of work, I don’t want to be distracted by music either. I want the din of all the crowd to die down while I concentrate. It’s also a great way to make any workroom instantly quiet when I need to write up a report during an event.

If you happen to have a custom pair of earplugs already for some reason, such as swimming or shooting sports, you’re already ahead of the curve. Those things probably do an amazing job of blocking out everything. For those of us not lucky enough to have something custom, just hop down to a drugstore or department store and pick up on a set or three of the really cheap foam plugs. You can pass them out to your friends and even make a new one or two. Just don’t expect to converse a lot!

Tom’s Take

I find the little things are needed to make life more bearable. Because knowing that I have them makes me less likely to stress about all the crazy stuff that can happen during a conference. The unexpected happens all the time. Yet, by definition, we can’t expect it! But, if we know how to prepare for the majority of those things we can focus on having a good conference experience. We may not need a cell phone jammer or an oddly-specific size of metric wrench, but carrying the things above has really helped me when it comes to relaxing a bit at conferences.

IT Burnout – The Task List

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Sadly, this picture above is me. I used to think I had one of the best memories in the world. It turns out my memory is well-suited for bar trivia and routing protocol esoterics. My memory doesn’t appear so adept at remembering other little things that are of more important, such as remembering to buy a gift for a birthday or following up on an email that I sent last week.

Human brains are great at processing information. But some of the ones that are best at processing it are horrible at recalling it. I think of it not unlike a three-tiered storage array. The fast access tasks are in the fastest storage tier where they are needed. The longer term but less important info goes into the near-line tier where it can be recalled when needed. And in my case, the bandwidth to that tier is slow and unreliable.

Exciting Things!

One of my solutions to this problem is getting better with task management. As bad as my memory is, it’s also not well suited to writing things down to remember them. The irony is almost too delicious to ignore. I need to write things down so I don’t forget them, but I forget to write them down. I’ve been studying more and more processes like Getting Things Done or Zen To Done to help me change the way I store and process information.

I’ve really been trying to use Things as my go-to task manager. Everyone has their favorites and the best task manager is the one you use on a regular basis. I’m trying to get better about using it to collect my thoughts so I can focus on things like writing posts and answering emails without dedicating time and mental bandwidth to actually remembering to do those things.

It’s handy to have a task manager on every device I use. I can drop tasks where I need them and when I need them. The ability to transfer notes and other writings to my devices and have it all sync automatically is wonderful. But it’s also a curse in disguise.

Too Many Things!

The curse of trying to capture all the information you want to remember is that you have to then process the things you remember for yourself. And trying to do that has made me realized I have a lot of things I want to try and keep going all at once. And even just seeing all the daily things I want to try and keep track of is reminding me that I have lots of juggling that I do frequently.

This idea of seeing all the things I have to do on a regular basis could easily lead to IT burnout in your job. I’ve felt it before in my engineering role when I looked at all the jobs on the board that needed to be done and realized I didn’t have enough hours in the day to finish them all on the schedule that they needed to be done.

It does feel good to see all the tasks that I’ve checked off the list as I get things accomplished, but I also know that I feel a sense of dread when I set a future date for an email or a contact to follow up on. The idea of putting it “out of sight, out of mind” lets me feel better about what I currently see. However, knowing there are things just waiting out there that need to be done another time or that things are getting carried over from day-to-day is enough to give pause.

More and more, I’m finding that the key that I need to adhere to is to work the tasks as they come up and find ways to get things accomplished instead of putting them off. Task management is great because it allows you to prioritize. But it also means it’s easy to delay and reschedule too. You have to find a way to make the things you do important enough so that getting them accomplished lets you clear your plate.

If you keep rescheduling and reassigning tasks, you’re going to get buried. If you can’t keep your plate clear it’s going to fill up before you know it. You have to find the big rocks and deal with them so you’re free to deal with the little ones.

Tom’s Take

No system is perfect. Everything can be refined given time. But you also have to figure out how best to work within your own limitations. For me, that’s realizing that I can’t start forgetting to write things down. It’s also realizing that I need to focus on the important stuff on my list and keep checking things off so I don’t get overwhelmed. Time is the ally of burnout. Given enough time anyone can end up burned out from overwork or from too much to accomplish. They key is to keep working through your list and don’t let things pile up on you.

I Was A 10x Engineer. And I’m Sorry.

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You probably saw the big discussion this past weekend on Twitter about 10x Engineers. It all started with a tweet about how to recognize a 10x Engineer, followed by tons of responses about how useless they were and how people that had encountered them were happy to be rid of them. All that discussion made me think back to my old days as a Senior Network Rock Star. As I reminisced I realized that I was, in fact, a 10x Engineer. And I was miserable.

Pour Some Work On Me

I wasn’t always the epitome of engineering hatred. I used to be a wide-eyed technician with a hunger to learn things. I worked on a variety of systems all over the place. In fact, I was rising through the ranks of my company as a Novell Engineer in an environment with plenty of coverage. I was just learning the ropes and getting ready to take my place in a group of interchangeable people.

Then I started getting into networking. I spent more time learning about routers and switches and even firewalls. That meant that my skill set was changing from servers to appliances. It also meant that I was spending more and more time working on devices that no one else could work on. I had special knowledge that made me much more valuable to the organization. Soon, I found myself spending less and less time working on the Novell command line and more time working on the Cisco CLI.

That was the first extra “x” on my resume. Because I had special skills it meant that I was being relied upon more to do work that no one else could do. Suddenly I wasn’t just a replaceable cog in the machine. Instead, I was a critical part of the infrastructure that needed to be on-site for certain jobs and deployments. I knew that I needed to have someone else to help me out or I was going to quickly find myself overwhelmed with work. But networking wasn’t the thing that ended up pushing me all the way to 10x territory.

A Voice In The Wilderness

In order to truly become an insufferable 10x Engineering talent, I had to pivot into voice deployments. That’s because my skill set went from “important but we’re training others” to “so complicated no one else can understand this”. Thanks to my knowledge of networking, I was asked to pick up the voice banner and run with it. And I ran really, really far.

I was the only person in the office working on Cisco voice deployments. I had my own method of doing things. My own flow for deployments. My notes were contained in a OneNote file that only I had access to. You can probably see all the issues already. But I couldn’t. To me, this was my jam! I had all the tools and talent to make this happen. I could type MAC addresses faster than filling them into a BAT spreadsheet. I could configure crazy hacks to get around limitations thanks to all the extra research I was doing. I was invincible!

I was also gumming up the works. Voice deployments had to be constantly rescheduled if I was out of town. Vacations were a distant memory at best. I wasn’t just the most important cog in the machine – I was the machine. Nothing went forward unless I was doing it. And that’s not scalable at all. Even when my boss realized that I couldn’t scale any more he also knew that getting someone up to speed on my deployment methods and knowledge was a very daunting task at best.

This is the classic setup for a 10x Engineer. All the talent in the world and all of the hubris. Large portions of the line-of-business relying on their knowledge and process. No documentation. No way to get things done other than to go through me. If you’ve ever read The Phoenix Project by Gene Kim you realize that I was Brent through and through. In fact, when I finally did get around to reading it I self-identified with him before I’d even made it 100 pages in.

Pride Goeth Before

Ultimately, it wasn’t failure that caused my 10x Engineering career to come to an end. Instead, it was success. I left my old job six years ago to come to Tech Field Day. I knew I wouldn’t be fixing routers or voicemail systems any longer. I’d be in for an entirely new and different kind of work.

But I couldn’t see how my old job would be able to work without me. I secretly confided to some friends that I thought their business would fall apart without me. How could it survive? I was responsible for so much! I was the only one that knew all of these things! Even a lengthy two-week info dump wouldn’t be enough.

The pride and hubris I displayed is still shocking to me all these years later. To think that a company that had been in business for almost 20 years before I got there would go out of business months after I left because they couldn’t do what I was doing. They did stay in business. They changed, for sure. They moved away from my specialized knowledge and found new ways to utilize their talent. They were able to keep my systems up and running with my notes and when the time came to replace them they used new systems that didn’t need my help to manage and install. They survived because they realized that what I represented was special and couldn’t be replicated.

Me? I’m happy they did. I didn’t want my 10x Engineering efforts to be an anchor around either of our necks. I couldn’t go back to fixing my old systems with my new workload. And my old company couldn’t count on me being available to fix things when I was gone. They made the right choices to put themselves into a position to keep going. And just like most positive 10x Engineer stories they found a happy ending.

Tom’s Take

I’m not proud of my engineering roots when it comes to how bad I was at times. It wasn’t always intentional. It was a product of where I was and the work I was doing. But I totally couldn’t see the forest for the trees. I realize now that I should have taken more people under my wing and helped them understand what I was doing. I should have documented my work and used repeatable methods to build processes that could be done by anyone. My institutional knowledge should have been a resource, not a crutch. And I should have had the humility to understand that companies can live and grow past a single engineer. Knowing all that today makes me realize that I may have looked like a 10x Engineer but everyone is much better off now that I’m just a simple ex-engineer.

The Development of DevNet’s Future

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You’re probably familiar with Cisco DevNet. If not, DevNet is the place Cisco has embraced outreach to the developer community building for software-defined networking (SDN). Though initially cautious in getting into the software developer community, Cisco has embraced their new role and really opened up to help networking professionals embrace the new software normal in networking. But where is DevNet going to go from here?

Humble Beginnings

DevNet wasn’t always the darling of Cisco’s offerings. I can remember sitting in on some of the first discussions around Cisco OnePK and thinking to myself, “This is never going to work.”

My hesitation with Cisco’s first attempts to focus on software platforms came from two places. The first was what I saw as Cisco trying to figure out how to extend the platforms to include some programmability. It was more about saying they could do software and less about making that software easy to use or program against. The second place was actually the lack of a place to store all of this software knowledge. Programmers and developers are fickle lot and you have to have a repository where they can get access to the pieces they needed.

DevNet was that place that Cisco should have built from the start. It was a way to get people excited and involved in the process. But it wasn’t for everyone at first. If you don’t speak developer you’re going to feel lost. Even if you are completely fluent in networking and you know what you want to accomplish, just not how to get there. DevNet started off as the place to let the curious learn how to combine networking and programming.

The Ascent

DevNet really came into their own about 3 years ago. I use that timeline because that’s when I first heard that people were wanting to spend more time at Cisco Live in the DevNet Zone learning programming and other techniques and less time in traditional sessions. Considering the long history of Cisco Live that’s an impressive feat.

More importantly, DevNet changed the conversation for professionals. Instead of just being for the curious, DevNet became a place where anyone could go and find the information they needed. It became a resource. Not just a playground. Instead of poking around and playing with things it became a place to go and figure things out. Or a place to learn more about a new technology that you wanted to implement, like automation. If the regular sessions at Cisco Live were what you had to learn, DevNet is where you wanted to go and learn.

Susie Wee (@SusieWee) deserves all the credit in the world here. She has seen what the developer community needs to thrive inside of Cisco and she’s delivered it. She’s the kind of ambassador that can go between the various Cisco business units (BUs) and foster the kind of attitudes that people need to have to succeed. It’s no longer about turf wars or fiefdoms. Instead, it’s about leveraging a common platform for developers and networkers alike to find a common ground to build from. But even that’s not enough to complete the vision.

Narrow of Purpose, Wide of Vision

During Cisco Live 2019, I talked quite a bit with Susie and her team. And one of things that struck me from our conversations was not how DevNet was an open and amazing place. Or how they were adding sessions as fast as they could find instructors. It was that so many people weren’t taking advantage of it. That’s when I realized that DevNet needs to shift their focus. Instead of just providing a place for networking people to learn, they’re going to have to go on the offensive.

DevNet needs to enhance and increase their outreach programs. Being a static resource is fine when your audience is eager to learn and looking for answers. But those people have already flocked to the DevNet banner. For things to grow, DevNet needs to pull the laggards along. The people who think automation is just a fad. Or that SDN is in the Trough of Disillusionment from a pretty Gartner graphic. DevNet has momentum, and soon will have the certification program needed to help networking people show off their transformation to developers.

Tom’s Take

For DevNet to really succeed, they need to be grabbing people by the collar and dragging them to the new reality of networking. It’s not enough to give people a place to do research on nice-to-have projects. You’re going to have get the people engaged and motivated. That means committing resources to entry-level outreach. Maybe even building a DevNet Academy similar to the Cisco Academy. But it has to happen. Because the people that aren’t already at DevNet aren’t going to get there on their own. They need a push (or a pull) to find out what they don’t know that they don’t know.

What Happens When The Internet Breaks?

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It’s a crazy idea to think that a network built to be completely decentralized and resilient can be so easily knocked offline in a matter of minutes. But that basically happened twice in the past couple of weeks. CloudFlare is a service provider that offers to sit in front of your website and provide all kinds of important services. They can prevent smaller sites from being knocked offline by an influx of traffic. They can provide security and DNS services for you. They’re quickly becoming an indispensable part of the way the Internet functions. And what happens when we all start to rely on one service too much?

Bad BGP Behavior

The first outage on June 24, 2019 wasn’t the fault of CloudFlare. A small service provider in Pennsylvania decided to use a BGP Optimizer from Noction to do some route optimization inside their autonomous system (AS). That in and of itself shouldn’t have caused a problem. At least, not until someone leaked those routes to the greater internet.

It was a comedy of errors. The provider in question announced their more specific routes to an upstream customer, who in turn announced them to Verizon. After that all bets are off. Because those routes were more specific than the aggregates they became the preferred routes. And when the whole world beats a path to your door to get to the rest of the world, you see issues.

Those issues caused CloudFlare to go offline. And when CloudFlare goes offline everyone starts having issues. The sites they are the front end for go offline, even if the path to those sites is still valid. That’s because CloudFlare is acting as the front end for your site when you use their service. It’s great because it means that when someone knocks your system offline or hits you with a ton of traffic you’re safe because CloudFlare can support a lot more bandwidth than you can, especially if you’re self hosted. But if CloudFlare is out, you’re out of luck.

There was a pretty important lesson to be learned in all this and CloudFlare did an okay job of explaining some of those lessons. But the tone of their article was a bit standoffish and seemed to imply that the people whose responsibility it was to keep the Internet running should do a better job of keeping their house in order. For those of you playing along at home, you’ll realize that the irony overlords were immediately summoned to mete out justice to CloudFlare.

Irregular Expression

On July 2nd, CloudFlare went down again. This time, instead of seeing issues with routing packets or delays, users of the service were greeted with 502 Bad Gateway errors. Again, when CloudFlare is down your site is down even if you’re not offline. And then the speculation started. Was this another BGP hijack? Was CloudFlare being attacked? No one knew and most of the places you could go look were offline, including one of the biggest offline site detectors, which was a user of CloudFlare services.

CloudFlare eventually posted a blog owning up to the fact that it wasn’t an attack or a BGP issue, but instead was the result of a bad web application firewall (WAF) rule being deployed globally in one go. A single regular expression (regex) was responsible for spiking the CPU utilization of the entirety of the CloudFlare network. And when all your CPUs are cranking along at 100% utilization across the board, you are effectively offline.

In the post-mortem CloudFlare had to eat a little crow and admit that their testing procedures for catching this particular issue were inadequate. To see the stance they took with Verizon and Noction just a week or so before and then to see how they had to admit that this one was all on them was a bit humbling for sure. But, more importantly, it shows that you have to be vigilant in every part of your organization to ensure that some issue that you deploy isn’t going to cause havoc on the other side. Especially if you’re the responsible party of a large percentage of traffic on the web.

Tom’s Take

I think CloudFlare is doing good work with their services. But I also think that too many people are relying on them to provide services that should be planned out and documented. It’s important to realize that no one service is going to provide all the things you need to stay resilient. You need to know how you’re keeping your site online and what your backup plan is when things go down.

And, if you’re running one of those services, you’d better be careful about running your mouth on the Internet.

Extremely Hive Minded

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I must admit that I was wrong. After almost six years, I was mistake about who would end up buying Aerohive. You may recall back in 2013 I made a prediction that Aerohive would end up being bought by Dell. I recall it frequently because quite a few people still point out that post and wonder what if it’s happened yet.

Alas, June 26, 2019 is the date when I was finally proven wrong when Extreme Networks announced plans to purchase Aerohive for $4.45/share, which equates to around $272 million paid, which will be adjust for some cash on hand. Aerohive is the latest addition to the Extreme portfolio, which now includes pieces of Brocade, Avaya, Enterasys, and Motorola/Zebra.

Why did Extreme buy Aerohive? I know that several people in the industry told me they called this months ago, but that doesn’t explain the reasoning behind spending almost $300 million right before the end of the fiscal year. What was the draw that have Extreme buzzing about this particular company?

Flying Through The Clouds

The most apparent answer is HiveManager. Why? Because it’s really the only thing unique to Aerohive that Extreme really didn’t have already. Aerohive’s APs aren’t custom built. Aerohive’s switching line was rebadged from an ODM in order to meet the requirements to be included in Gartner’s Wired and Wireless Magic Quadrant. So the real draw was the software. The cloud management platform that Aerohive has pushed as their crown jewel for a number of years.

I’ll admit that HiveManager is a very nice piece of management software. It’s easy to use and has a lot of power behind the scenes. It’s also capable of being tuned for very specific vertical requirements, such as education. You can set up self-service portals and Private Pre-Shared Keys (PPSKs) fairly easily for your users. You can also build a lot of policy around the pieces of your network, both hardware and users. That’s a place to start your journey.

Why? Because Extreme is all about Automation! I talked to their team a few weeks ago and the story was all about building automation platforms. Extreme wants to have systems that are highly integrated and capable of doing things to make life easier for administrators. That means having the control pieces in place. And I’m not sure if what Extreme had already was in the same league as HiveManager. But I doubt Extreme has put as much effort into their software yet as Aerohive had invested in theirs over the past 8 years.

For Extreme to really build out the edge network of the future, they need to have a cloud-based management system that has easy policy creation and can be extended to include not only wireless access points but wired switches and other data center automation. If you look at what is happening with intent-based networking from other networking companies, you know how important policy definition is to the schema of your network going forward. In order to get that policy engine up and running quickly to feed the automation engine, Extreme made the call to buy it.

Part of the Colony

More importantly than the software piece, to me at least, is the people. Sure, you can have a bunch of people hacking away at code for a lot of hours to build something great. You can even choose to buy that something great from someone else and just start modifying it to your needs. Extreme knew that adapting HiveManager to fulfill the needs of their platform wasn’t going to be a walk in the park. So bringing the Aerohive team on board makes the most sense to me.

But it’s also important to realize who had a big hand in making the call. Abby Strong (@WiFi_Princess) is the VP of Product Marketing at Extreme. Before that she held the same role at Aerohive in some fashion for a number of years. She drove Aerohive to where they were before moving over to Extreme to do something similar.

When you’re building a team, how do you do it? Do you run out and find random people that you think are the best for the job and hope they gel quickly? Do you just throw darts at a stack of resumes and hope random chance favors your bold strategy? Or do you look at existing teams that work well together and can pull off amazing feats of technical talent with the right motivation? I’d say the third option is the most successful, wouldn’t you?

It’s not unheard of in the wireless industry for an entire team to move back and forth between companies. There’s a hospitality team that’s moved back and forth between Ruckus, Aerohive, and Ubiquiti. There are other teams, like some working on 802.11u, that bounced around a couple of times before they found a home. Which makes me wonder if Extreme bought Aerohive for HiveManager and ended up with the development team as a bonus? Or if they decided to buy the development team and got the software for “free”?

Tom’s Take

We all knew Aerohive was putting itself on the market. You don’t shed sales staff and middle management unless you’re making yourself a very attractive target for acquisition. I still held out hope that maybe Dell would come through for me and make my five-year-old prediction prescient. Instead, the right company snapped up Aerohive for next to nothing and will start in earnest integrating HiveManager into their stack in the coming months. I don’t know what the future plans for further integration look like, but the wireless world is buzzing right now and that should make life extremely sweet for the Aerohive team.

Cisco Live 2019 – Rededicating Community

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The 2019 Cisco Live Sign Photo

Another Cisco Live is in the books for me. I was a bit shocked to realize this was my 14th event in a row. I’ve been going to Cisco Live half of the time it’s been around! This year was back in San Diego, which has good and bad points. I’d like to discuss a few of them there and get the thoughts of the community.

Good: The Social Media Hub Has Been Freed! – After last year’s issues with the Social Media Hub being locked behind the World of Solutions, someone at Cisco woke up and realized that social people don’t keep the same hours as the show floor people. So, the Hub was located in a breezeway between the Sails Pavilion and the rest of the convention center. And it was great. People congregated. Couches were used. Discussions were had. And the community was able to come together again. Not during the hours when it was convenient. But a long time. This picture of the big meeting on Thursday just solidifies in my mind why the Social Media Hub has to be in a common area:

You don’t get this kind of interaction anywhere else!

Good: Community Leaders Step Forward – Not gonna lie. I feel disconnected sometimes. My job at Tech Field Day takes me away from the action. I spend more time in special sessions than I do in the social media hub. For any other place that could spell disaster. But not for Cisco Live. When the community needs a leader, someone steps forward to fill the role. This year, I was happy to see my good friend Denise Fishburne filling that role. The session above was filled with people paying rapt attention to Fish’s stories and her bringing people into the community. She’s a master at this kind of interaction. I was even proud to sit on the edge and watch her work her craft.

Fish is the d’Artagnan of the group. She may be part of the Musketeers of Social Media but Fish is undoubtedly the leader. A community should hope to have a leader that is as passionate and involved as she is, especially given her prominent role in Cisco. I feel like she can be the director of what the people in the Social Media Hub need. And I’m happy to call her my friend.

Bad: Passes Still Suck – You don’t have to do the math to figure out that $700 is bigger than $200. And that $600/night is worse than $200/night. And yet, for some reason we find ourselves in San Diego, where the Gaslamp hotels are beyond insane, wondering what exactly we’re getting with our $700 event pass. Sessions? Nope. Lunch? Well, sort of. Access to the show floor? Only when it’s open for the random times during the week. Compelling content? That’s the most subjective piece of all. And yet Cisco is still trying to tell us that the idea of a $200 social-only pass doesn’t make sense.

Fine. I get it. Cisco wants to keep the budgets for Cisco Live high. They got the Foo Fighters after all, right? They also don’t have to worry about policing the snacks and food everywhere. Or at least not ordering the lowest line items on the menu. Which means less fussing about piddly things inside the convention center. And for the next two years it’s going to work out just great in Las Vegas. Because Vegas is affordable with the right setup. People are already booking rooms at the surrounding hotels. You can stay at the Luxor or the Excalibur for nothing. But if the pass situation is still $700 (or more) in a couple of years you’re going to see a lot of people dropping out. Because….

Bad: WTF?!? San Francisco?!? – I’ve covered this before. My distaste for Moscone is documented. I thought we were going to avoid it this time around. And yet, I found out we’re going back to SF in 2022.

WHY?!?!?!?

Moscone isn’t any bigger. We didn’t magically find seating for 10,000 extra people. More importantly, the hotel situation in San Fran is worse than ever before. You seriously can’t find a good room this year for VMworld. People are paying upwards of $500/night for a non-air conditioned shoe box! And why would you do this to yourself Cisco?

Sure, it’s cheap. Your employees don’t need hotel rooms. You can truck everything up. But your costs savings are being passed along to the customer. Because you would rather them pay through the nose instead of footing the bill yourself. And Moscone still won’t hold the whole conference. We’ll be spilled over into 8 different hotels and walking from who knows where to get to the slightly nicer shack of a convention center.

I’m not saying that Cisco Live needs to be in Vegas every year. But it’s time for Cisco to start understanding that their conference needs a real convention center. And Moscone ain’t it.

Better: Going Back to Orlando – As you can see above, I’ve edited this post to include new information about Cisco Live 2022. I have been informed by multiple people, including internal Cisco folks, that Live 2022 is going to Orlando and not SF. My original discussion about Cisco Live in SF came from other sources with no hard confirmation. I believe now it was floated as a trial balloon to see how the community would respond. Which means all my statements above still stand regarding SF. Now it just means that there’s a different date attached to it.

Orlando is a better town for conventions than SF. It’s on-par with San Diego with the benefit that hotels are way cheaper for people because of the large amount of tourism. I think it’s time that Cisco did some serious soul searching to find a new venue that isn’t in California or Florida for Cisco Live. Because if all we’re going to do is bounce back and forth between San Diego and Orlando and Vegas over and over again, maybe it’s time to just move Cisco Live to Vegas and be done with the moving.

Tom’s Take

Cisco Live is something important to me. It has been for years, especially with the community that’s been created. There’s nothing like it anywhere else. Sure, there have been some questionable decisions and changes here and there. But the community survives because it rededicates itself every year to being about the people. I wasn’t kidding when I tweeted this:

Because the real heart of the community is each and every one of the people that get on a plane and make the choice time and again to be a part of something special. That kind of dedication makes us all better in every possible way.

The CCIE Times Are A Changing

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Today is the day that the CCIE changes. A little, at least. The news hit just a little while ago that there are some changes to the way the CCIE certification and recertification process happens. Some of these are positive. Some of these are going to cause some insightful discussion. Let’s take a quick look at what’s changing and how it affects you. Note that these changes are not taking effect until February 24, 2020, which is in about 8 months.

Starting Your Engines

The first big change comes from the test that you take to get yourself ready for the lab. Historically, this has been a CCIE written exam. It’s a test of knowledge designed to make sure you’re ready to take the big lab. It’s also the test that has been used to recertify your CCIE status.

With the new change on Feb. 24th, the old CCIE written will go away. The test that is going to be used to qualify candidates to take the CCIE lab exam is the Core Technology exam from the CCNP track. The Core Technology exam in each CCNP track serves a dual purpose in the new Cisco certification program. If you’re going for your CCNP you need the Core Technology exam and one other exam from a specific list. That Core Technology exam also qualifies you to schedule a CCIE lab attempt within 18 months.

This means that the CCNP is going to get just a little harder now. Instead of taking multiple tests over routing, switching, or voice you’re going to have all those technologies lumped together into one long exam. There’s also going to be more practical questions on the Core Technologies exam. That’s great if you’re good at configuring devices. But the amount of content on the individual exam is going to increase.

Keeping The Home Fires Burning

Now that we’ve talked about qualification to take the lab exam, let’s discuss the changes to recertification. The really good news is that the Continuing Education program is expanding and giving more options for recertification.

The CCIE has always required you to recertify every two years. But if you miss your recertification date you have a one year “grace period”. Your CCIE status is suspended but you don’t lose your number until the end of the one-year period. This grace period has informally been called the “penalty box” by several people in the industry. Think of it like a time out to focus on getting your certification current.

Starting February 24, 2020, this grace period is now formalized as an extra year of certification. The CCIE will now be valid for 3 years instead of just 2. However, if you do not recertified by the end of the 3rd year, you lose your number. There is no grace period any longer. This means you need to recertify within the 3-year period.

As far as how to recertify, you now have some additional options. You can still recertify using CE credits. The amount has gone up from 100 to 120 credits to reflect the additional year that CCIEs get to recertify now. There is also a new way to recertify using a combination of CE credits and tests. You can take the Core Technologies exam and use 40 CE credits to recertify. You can also pass two Specialist exams and use 40 CE credits to recertify. This is a great way to pick up skills in a new discipline and learn new technologies. You can choose to pass a single Specialist exam and use 80 CE credits to recertify within the three-year period. This change is huge for those of us that need to recertify. It’s a great option that we don’t have today. They hybrid model offers great flexibility for those that are taking tests but also taking e-learning or classroom training.

The biggest change, however, is in the test-only option. Historically, all you needed to do is pass the CCIE written every two years to recertify. With the changes to the written exam used to qualify you to take the lab, that is no longer an option. As listed above, simply taking the Core Technologies exam is not enough. You must also take 40 CE credits.

So, what tests will recertify you? The first is the CCIE lab. If you take and pass a lab exam within the recertification period you’ll be recertified. You can also take three Specialist exams. The combination of three will qualify you for recertification. You can also take the Core Technologies exam and another professional exam to recertify. This means that passing the test required for the CCNP will recertify your CCIE. There is still one Expert-level exam that will work to recertify your CCIE – the CCDE written. Because no changes were made to the CCDE program in this project, the CCDE written exam will still recertify your CCIE.

Also, your recertification date is no longer dependent on your lab date. Historically your recert date was based on the date you took your lab. Now, it’s going to be whatever date you pass your exam or submit your CEs. The good news is this means that all your certifications are going to line up. Because your CCNA and CCNP dates have always been 3 years as well, recertifying your CCIE will sync up all your certifications to the date you recertify your CCIE. It’s a very welcome quality of life change.

Another welcome change is that there will no longer be a program fee when submitting your CE credits. As soon as you have amassed the right combination you just submit them and you’re good to go. No $300 fee. There’s also a great change for anyone that has been a CCIE for 20 years or more. If you choose to “retire” to Emeritus status you no longer have to pay the program fee. You will be a CCIE forever. Even if you are an active CCIE and you choose not to recertify after 20 years you will be automatically enrolled in the Emeritus program.

Managing Change

So, this is a big change. A single test will no longer recertify your number. You’re going to have to expand your horizons by investing in continuing education. You’re going to have to take a class or do some outside study on a new topic like wireless or security. That’s the encouragement from Cisco going forward. You’re not going to be able to just keep learning the same BGP and OSPF-related topics over and over again and hope to keep your certification relevant.

This is going to work out in favor of the people that complain the CCIE isn’t relevant to the IT world of today. Because you can learn about things like network automation and programmability and such from Cisco DevNet and have it count for CCIE recertification, you have no excuse not to bring yourself current to modern network architecture. You also have every opportunity to learn about new technologies like SD-WAN, ACI, and many other things. Increasing your knowledge takes care of keeping your CCIE status current.

Yes, you’re going to lose the ability to panic after two and a half years and cram to take a single test one or two times to reset for the next three years. You also need to be on top of your CCIE CE credits and your recert date. This means you can’t be lazy any longer and just assume you need to recertify every odd or even year. It means that your life will be easier without tons of cramming. But it means that the way things used to be aren’t going to be like that any longer.

Tom’s Take

Change is hard. But it’s inevitable. The CCIE is the most venerable certification in the networking world and one of the longest-lived certifications in the IT space. But that doesn’t mean it’s carved in stone as only being a certain way forever. The CCIE must change to stay relevant. And that means forcing CCIEs to stay relevant. The addition of the continuing education piece a couple of years ago is the biggest and best thing to happen in years. Expanding the ability for us to learn new technologies and making them eligible for us to recertify is a huge gift. What we need to do is embrace it and keep the CCIE relevant. We need to keep the people who hold those certifications relevant. Because the fastest way to fade into obscurity is to keep things the way they’ve always been.

You can find more information about all the changes in the Cisco Certification Program at http://Cisco.com/nextlevel