[Misc][Rant] Internet router

Thu Sep 29 20:34:05 UTC 2005

On Sep 29, 2005, at 12:56 PM, Elmar K. Bins wrote:

>
> elmi at 4ever.de (Elmar K. Bins) wrote:
>
>
>> That somehow sums it up quite good.
>>
>
> Folks, I'm taking this back, seeing that the original poster is not  
> alone.
>
> Makes me wonder as to what current "network engineers" do know  
> about the
> world they do networking in. I - please forgive me if this seems  
> far-fetched -
> would have thought everybody doing "real" networking (as in  
> "interconnecting
> with other networks") would know where and how to look for that  
> information
> and how to interpret the usual tools' output.
>
> Am I wrong?

Yes, sadly you are...

Part of the problem is that during "dot-com boom" (shudder) a large  
number of people heard that network engineering was easy money and  
took a class at the local community college. They don't like  
networks, they don't care about connectivity, its just a job to them.  
They don't want to learn anything and so they don't.

Unlike some other engineering fields (I think that civil engineers  
are an example of this), you don't have to get any sort of  
certification / license to claim that you are a network *engineer*. I  
have met "Senior Network Engineers" who don't understand longest  
match rule ("The traffic will take 10/8 instead of 10.0.0.0/24  
because it has a better admin distance", "I can override these 300  
OSPF routes with a single static supernet", etc), who believe that  
routers will not route between directly connected interfaces without  
putting them into a routing protocol, that transit networks don't  
need a full mesh of iBGP[1] because "you can just redistribute BGP  
into [OSPF/IS-IS/IGP of choice], that ICMP uses TCP as a transport,  
etc. These are not simple brain-farts, there were all examples of  
deeply held beliefs that needed example networks built to convince  
the person otherwise (and the person who thought that routers would  
not route between directly connected networks without having the  
networks in a routing protocol still thinks that the example device  
was misfunctioning :-( ).

I am sure that there are other, much more scary examples out there,  
feel free to send me (humorous) examples, I need a laugh today...

Warren "Bitter today" Kumari
[1] Yeah, yeah, or route reflectors,  or confeds, or.. or... or...

* Please note, this is not directed at Ronald at all, who I am  
assuming is clue-full but hadn't had coffee yet...

>
> Puzzled,
>     Elmar.
>
> --
>
> "Begehe nur nicht den Fehler, Meinung durch Sachverstand zu  
> substituieren."
>                           (PLemken, <bu6o7e$e6v0p$2 at ID-31.news.uni- 
> berlin.de>)
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------- 
> [ ELMI-RIPE ]---
>
>