Lessons from Career Coaching

         personal      work

In the autumn of 2022, I got an opportunity to attend an external leadership course. One of the things that it involved was some coaching sessions. I didn’t really think that talking to someone about work was something that I needed (and honestly probably didn’t understand what a coach did…), but engaged with it anyway. Cue the start of 2023 — Google went through some big changes, and unfortunately, my health took another downturn.

OpenConfig Interfaces - Some Examples

         imported      Code · Tech · Work · ISP · IETF · python · OpenConfig · YANG

I’ve talked a little on this site before about what we’re trying to achieve with OpenConfig. However, one of the observations that it’s easy to make is that YANG models alone don’t really achieve anything in terms of making the network more programmable. To make the network more programmable, we need to have tooling that helps us create instances of those modules, manipulate them, and then serialise the into a format that can be used to transmit data that conforms to the model to a device.

The right tool for the job: Choosing where to use RSVP-TE or SR.

         imported      Work · MPLS · RSVP · MPLS_TE · IETF · SR

I noted that at NANOG64 this week in San Francisco, there are talks (both from Juniper) about both SPRING/Segment Routing and RSVP-TE. These are both protocols/technology approaches (since one can’t really call SR a protocol) that I’ve been involved in the evolution of over the last few years. A question that I’ve been asked more times than I’d like is why we chose to look at a new approach (SR) rather than go with a technology that exists RSVP-TE.

SPRING Forward(ing)

         imported      Work · MPLS · RSVP · MPLS_TE · Presentations · UKNOF · SR

I recently gave a talk at UKNOF relating to Segment Routing/SPRING and the operational challenges that we are trying to resolve through it. You can see it on YouTube below - or the slides are on this site - SPRING Forward(ing) - UKNOF27   

Almost Two Years On: Where is SDN?

         imported      Work · MPLS_TE · SDN

Almost two years ago I wrote a post on this site entitled Some Initial Thoughts on the SDN. Clearly, since then the SDN concept gained some more legs (and entered a new stage of the hype cycle) - so, where are we right now? Firstly, I think its fair to say that the concept presented by Scott Shenker of having a single centralised computational element controlling COTS OpenFlow-speaking switches has fallen out of favour somewhat (based on the discussions with other network architects, engineers, and implementors that I have had).

Reinforcing the Kitchen Sink - Another BGP Presentation

         imported      Work · ISP · BGP · IETF · Presentations · netnod

On Friday, I presented at the Netnod meeting in Stockholm, Sweden - again about BGP error handling - this time presenting a bit of an update as to why this continues to be a problem for the Internet (and private BGP deployments) - and why this work is still really relevant. In addition, I tried to give an overview of what the solution space looks like. I’m not sure whether there’s video, but as usual, the slides are linked below!

LINX71 - 100GE in the Lab

         imported      Tech · Work · ISP · Presentations

I spoke at LINX71 about the testing that we (C&W) have been doing in the lab with 100GigE - we got a pre-production card and hence had a look at the technology for real. Thanks to LINX, the presentation video can be seen by clicking on the image below. Once again, however, whatever LINX use as a presentation laptop didn't render my slides properly - even though I'd submitted PDF too!

BGP Error Handling and Enhancements Post IETF-79

         imported      Tech · Work · BGP · IETF

With IETF 79 happening last week - I think one of the great things that's coming out of the IDR work leading up to the meeting has been that quite a few drafts have been written around the requirements that exist in BGP for better error handling. I've been vocal about this before, of course, so it's not that surprising that I'm (yet again) banging the drum for this cause, however, we are getting somewhere finally.

UKNOF 16 - Enhancing BGP - Video

         imported      Work · London · ISP · BGP · IETF · UKNOF · Presentations

Tom Bird of PortFast and Brandon Butterworth of Bogons do a great job of webcasting, and recording UKNOF video. Thanks to them, the video of the presentation I gave at UKNOF16 can be watched here. Or you can download it by clicking the image below! As always, thoughts/comments/corrections most welcome! This is also probably a good time to mention that my new work mail address is rob.shakir (at) cw.com

Leaving AS5413

         imported      Work · Me · ISP

For information, and because it means that I have revoked a bunch of UIDs from my GPG Key I am no longer working at AS5413 (Vialtus, Daisy, GX Networks etc.) as of June 18th, 2010. It's been a good two years, but the company direction no longer co-incides with the direction in which I would like to go. I've enjoyed the projects I've worked on, been in contact with a lot of great people, and learnt a lot!