Sky UK recently completed their rollout of IPv6. The uptake statistics are quite remarkable. If you think that people don’t have IPv6-capable devices, or that their home routers can’t handle IPv6…you really need to look at the data, and re-think your opinion. APNIC has a long-running program collecting data on IPv6 client capability/preference by country […]
Time to move away from HPE Software
If you are still using HPE Software, you should actively plan to migrate away. The recent divestiture does not look good to me – I think existing customers are going to get soaked. Plan your migration now. I’ve said it before, that I retain a soft spot for Hewlett-Packard. They gave me my first professional […]
Stop using mobiles for conference calls
Stop using legacy mobile audio, especially for conference calls. There are better alternatives. You’re doing your customers and colleagues a disservice by using mobile audio. It’s time we moved on. PSTN is not much better either – switch to VoIP, and give your ears a break from crappy audio connections. Refresher: Audio Quality Standards There […]
Relocated at last
Just a quick note to let you know that I am now based in the San Francisco Bay Area. After much preparation, and administrative hassle, everything is now sorted. My company has relocated me to the Bay Area, where I will work at the San Jose HQ. Anna has of course joined me. We’re living […]
netmiko support for Brocade ICX and MLXe
Posted on: July 13, 2016 Categories: NMS, Routing & Switching Tags: Brocade
netmiko is a “Multi-vendor library to simplify Paramiko SSH connections to network devices,” written by Kirk Byers. It doesn’t solve all of your pain with dealing with CLI-only network devices, but it tries to at least take away the low-level hassle of setting up a connection, and handling variations with things like enable mode, line-breaks, […]
VRRP Skew Time (and always be learning…)
Posted on: May 31, 2016 Categories: Routing & Switching Tags: networking
It’s funny how you can work with something for years, but miss a small detail. This week I learnt about Skew Time for VRRP. The reason for it is completely obvious once you think about it, but for some reason the detail had escaped me for all these years. VRRP Hellos VRRP sends out a “hello” […]
Travel Badge of Shame
All frequent flyers strive to the top tier of their program. Qantas Platinum, BA Gold, KrisFlyer Elite Gold, United Premier 1K. They all want that extra level of benefits, those extra upgrades. But a former manager said: “You don’t really want to be on the top tier. You want to be on the tier just below, […]
GCP, and Regaining Trust
Google is telling us they’re serious about the cloud. They’re hiring the right people, spending the big bucks, and even (gasp!) talking to customers! (Oh how that must stick in their craw). They have great technology, they’ve proved it out at scale, and the price is right. There’s just one nagging doubt in the back […]
Networking’s not so bad
Ivan’s post this week was a good reminder that other parts of IT aren’t perfect either. It’s not all roses on the other side of the fence. Networking has done many good things, and often showed the way. Consider a conversation between a sysadmin & a network engineer: Look at how I can virtualise these […]
War Stories: Backup NICs, DNS and AD
A return to our sporadic series of networking war stories. This time it’s fun with dedicated backup networks, DNS auto-registration, and Active Directory. Thank God it’s a lot easier these days with virtualisation. But back then… Backups suck, but you need to do them somehow Back in the olden days we had a dedicated tape […]