Part 2 in the series. Most engineers think that cable is simply plug and play. And mostly, that true. In recent years, Ethernet standards and manufacturing Here are 20 things that Network Engineers have forgotten or don’t know about network cabling in a two part series on things I have learned in twenty years of looking after networks.
10 Safety Tips on Electrocution for the Network Engineer
30th July 2012 by 13 Comments
Short version – I’d like you to read just these if nothing else.
- A data centre uses a lot of electricity. It’s dangerous.
- Just in case you didn’t pay attention – Electricity is really dangerous. Right, can we move on ?
- You should be scared of being electrocuted. That will keep you safe.
- When electrocution happens, the muscles in your limbs contract. This causes arms and hands to wrap around or clench objects.
- Someone who is being electrocuted can’t let go because of this
- If you touch a person being electrocuted, you will get an electric shock too, and may also be injured.
- The BEST thing to do is to turn the power off.
- Know where the power kill switch is for Data Centre. Or at least the breaker for the area that you are in.
- Don’t work in the Data Centre alone.
- Learn resuscitation. People who have been electrocuted are likely to have breathing problems and heart failure.
People shouldn’t die at work. Think seriously about going home everyday and what you can do to make that happen.
Response: Distributed? Centralized? Both? – Cisco Blog on OnePK and SDN
29th July 2012 by 1 Comment
In this blog post, Frank Brockners ( part of the Get Your Build On team) gives a detailed and interesting look into Cisco’s SDN strategy and, specifically, how Cisco see OnePK as fitting into the market. At the moment, the future of SDN in the market is unclear. There are obviously point solutions in the data centre as Nicira showed recently but in terms of the overall network market outside of that market SDN is very unclear. I review this article and attempt to summarise Cisco’s SDN position.
Network Dictionary – Squashed Sausage Effect
29th July 2012 by Leave a Comment
Define “Squashed Sausage Effect”
Musing: Visio 2013 – Some Review Thoughts
28th July 2012 by 2 Comments
Somewhere in my RSS feeds I ended up looking at Visio 2013. Somehow, with all the fuss about Office 2013 it didn’t occur to me that there would be a new Visio. Visio is something of a burden and blessing. A blessing in that it works OK for network diagrams. Like a old soldering iron, [...]
IETF RFCs and Pagination. Still Necessary ?
27th July 2012 by 2 Comments
I don’t read every IETF RFC but I try look over a lot of them in my RSS reader as they are published. The IETF RFCs are all paginated like this, which is annoying. It’s not good politics to alienate the International audience this way.
Response: Why Community Counts
25th July 2012 by Leave a Comment
Brent Salisbury has great blog about his experiences using SDN and OpenFlow at a University. He wrote this post about the power of Community: The software development world wrote the book on community. The networking industry has typically been fragmented into islands with interactions being determined by vendor orchestrations. The leadership these folks are sowing [...]
Musing: Private Clouds Is Next. VMware and Nicira Is About That.
24th July 2012 by 2 Comments
It’s my personal suspicion that we might be approaching the start of the Private Cloud era. The herald is probably Microsoft getting their Office 2013 cloud package off the ground. By the time big companies, and especially Microsoft arrive, you realise that the early and exciting phases of public cloud are over.
Internets of Interest for 23rd July 2012
23rd July 2012 by 1 Comment
Collection of useful, relevant or just fun places on the Internets for 23rd July 2012 and a bit commentary about what I’ve found interesting about them: Why does the IT industry continue to listen to Gartner? | ZDNet – I agree. I find that Gartner is usually wrong, or missing core fundamentals on every [...]
What Is the Best IP Address to Ping to Test My Internet Connection ?
23rd July 2012 by 13 Comments
Quick tip on the best IP addresses on the Internet when you need to test your Internet connection from the command line
