Comparing Employment Relationships

I periodically re-evaluate my career, and my current position, and try to decide A) Should I change, and B) What sort of change should I make? One part of evaluating...

War Stories: Proxy ARP Auto-Configuration

This article is Part 5 in a 12-Part Series. Part 1 - War Stories: Loops that Permanently Broke the Network Part 2 - War Stories: Switches Lying about Duplex Mismatches...

Proxy ARP Sucks

Proxy ARP was often used in network designs 10–15 years ago, to enable NAT. It helped get around some specific challenges, but it was always an administrative hassle, and caused...

HP IMC 7.0 E0202: Steady Improvements

When I’m evaluating products, I’m more interested in their progression and development, than the exact feature list currently shipping. I like products that have a frequent release cycle, with a...

Monitoring IPv6 vs IPv4 Traffic on Juniper SRX

I use a Juniper SRX 110 at home, and my ISP is enlightened enough to offer IPv6 by default to all customers. My devices are dual-stack, and I know that a...

How Not to Publish Documentation

Good documentation is critical to the success of any product. Write clear deployment & configuration information, and you’ll have a higher project success rate. Detailed command references and troubleshooting information...

Polling XML Values with ScienceLogic

Most Network Management Systems are built to make it easy to poll data via SNMP. But ‘interesting’ data is not always available via SNMP. Sometimes it’s in another format, such...

War Stories: Dual-Vendor Firewall Strategy

This article is Part 4 in a 12-Part Series. Part 1 - War Stories: Loops that Permanently Broke the Network Part 2 - War Stories: Switches Lying about Duplex Mismatches...

Choosing the Best Product for the Client or the Best for Me?

A Miktrotik course was held in my area recently, and I thought “They make some really cool stuff, and it’s amazing value. Maybe I should go on the course?” But then...

Keeping Calm: Don't Lose Face

I got angry and swore and shouted during a business meeting recently, when I felt someone was doing a poor job. Ultimately this reflected poorly on me, not the other...

Scalyr - More than Just Logs

Earlier this year I came across Scalyr, a newer player in the cloud-based log management scene. They’re taking a slightly different approach to products like Loggly and Splunk. I’ve been...

Transparent Caching Won't Save Us

A recent Gigaom article asks: “Will transparent caching reshape the future of video on the internet?”