This may be stupid but..

Mon Nov 10 16:05:12 UTC 2003

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-nanog at merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog at merit.edu] On 
> Behalf Of Michael.Dillon at radianz.com
> Sent: Monday, November 10, 2003 6:03 AM
> To: nanog at merit.edu
> Subject: Re: This may be stupid but..
> 
> 
> 
<snip>

> When I interview, I start out by asking one or two key 
> questions that help me quickly get to the truth. For instance 
> at one company, when I has hiring NOC folks, I started by 
> asking them to explain traceroute 
> to me. The answer that I wanted was one which showed that they had 
> a detailed understanding of what was going on at the protocol 
> level as the packets flowed through the network because that 
> view of the network is needed to effectively troubleshoot 
> problems. It did lead to one awkward situation with a 16 
> year-old who immediately started talking about ICMP echos 
> with varying TTL and routers sending back ICMP echo-replies. 
> I wanted to end the interview and hire him on the spot but it 
> seemed unfair to give this young guy the idea that job 
> interviews are that short.

Especially since not all traceroutes use ICMP and the reply from the routers
is typically NOT ICMP echo-reply. :-)

<snip>

> 
> --Michael Dillon
> 

-Wayne Gustavus