Stop Documenting the Network via the Network

As humans, we like patterns and symmetry. Things mostly make sense when there’s a pattern or some logic and I think this is why a lot of network engineers seem to love documenting the network via the network. There is no substitution for proper documentation. An example – hostnames. My argument is that the hostname of switches could simply be switch1, switch2, switch3 etc. because if I want to know

Building a ZeroTier Bridged Network

I was listening to a recent Packet Pushers Priority Queue podcast called Meet ZeroTier – Open Source Networking and decided to give ZeroTier a go, to see if it really worked as described. TL;DR: Yes it really does work as described! If you’re unfamiliar with ZeroTier I highly recommend listening to this podcast to understand why, what and how. If you’re unsure on the why, what and how, this blog post

Should Network Engineers Also Be Programmers?

Short answer: Yes. Maybe not a programmer in the sense that you need to be proficient in C++, .NET, assembler, know UML etc but having some general programming knowledge is very useful. In my opinion and experience the most important programming skill to have is a fairly in-depth knowledge of a scripting language. Be that shell, Perl, Powershell or even batch scripts. A week doesn’t go by where I don’t write a