this is the art of network engineering podcast in this podcast we'll explore teams technologies and talented people we aim to bring new information to expand your skill sets and toolbox and share the stories of fellow network engineers welcome to the art of network engineering i am aj murray what's up dan what's up aj how you doing not too bad yeah what's what's new in dan's world still aci stuff man just trying to still still doing the aci do you think yeah i'm jealous i gotta tell you i'm jealous i wouldn't be it it so one thing i've learned about aci in this little journey of mine is it is so easy to get to just get that whole environment messy like it's it's easy so you gotta definitely clean up you can't let stuff linger so i'm just kinda i'm doing a lot of learning in that in that regard right uh how to keep the environment clean how to keep it you know straight and yeah on the rails so right yeah it's fun but it's definitely a tedious one oh man i so i did like the one really big aci project back in 2019 and there's been plenty of other aci opportunities but uh not around here in the northeast they've been like down in texas and other places and so i haven't really touched aci since that first uh first big project and i i gotta tell you like i'm itching to do it again like i want to get back to it yeah uh so hey fun you keep telling your aci experience i'll listen yeah yeah it's like gather round fun fun fact for the listeners um i'm pretty sure aci is what connected us right i think you were doing that yeah that project and i was working on aci and i was like i think i don't know if i reached out to you first or if you reached out to me but i think you hit me up first you had something to share with me you saw that i posted like an aci book and we started talking over that yeah so just a fun little fact what we're talking about right this second is yeah mine and aj's first uh interactions with each other so yeah that's right i remember that fondly awesome so what do you mean i'm getting ready to head out on another work trip i'm going to be two weeks in indianapolis working on another decent sized site actually there's already a team of engineers out there now they have been for the last two weeks so i am going out to relieve some guys so they can go back home to their families and we're doing some more of main campus switches access layer switches we've got a core switch upgrade coming up this weekend and we'll be doing some data center stuff next weekend and put a bow on this thing uh the week after that so okay so you're gonna be there for about two weeks then this week and yesterday yep uh this week well the yeah so so i'll come back like the 25th 26th something like that i'm okay i've got to tell you i'm curious because i keep hearing about these 17-year cicadas they're supposed to be coming out and like indiana's uh kind of like right there where where they are where a lot of them uh i guess tend to be so i'm i'm kind of interested to see them i've never seen them they don't they don't come up here to vermont they probably freeze their little butts off well they're very loud and annoying so there's nothing you're not really missing much just like yeah this is they're called like the brood x or something like that yeah yeah i'm not a cicada expert but yeah they're they're interesting are they out and about where you are are they coming no they they haven't come out yet they keep saying like news and everything they keep saying that it's any time now they'll be coming up out of the ground so so maybe by the time this episode releases uh maybe we'll see i hope not i hope they'll just stay in there yeah yeah so yeah that'll be my my next couple weeks so um i'm i may not be around for uh recording some episodes but i'll i'll try to get back in as soon as possible i haven't quite figured out the on the road uh recording setup and we're going to be working nights anyway so good deal yeah but i'll try to get back as soon as possible daddy aj's going to leave the kids are going to be at home alone you guys are going to trash the house again awesome well we got some good wins this week uh we got quite a bit piled up um i i forgot to announce a win at the beginning of last week's episode it was a pretty big win uh for our buddy uh ver taylor taylor passing another vmware professional level exam he passed the uh vcp uh network virtualization so uh focuses on nsx okay and i think he now holds four out of the six possible vcps and because of this he personally now holds the vmware data center virtualization master competency for the company that him and i work for like he's solely like the the company now has earned that because he got those for certifications like normally you know maybe a few people on the team between you know two three four of them would have the four certs and and that's how the company would get the competency but he did it all on its own freaking taylor and i think he's making plans to finish off those last two uh those last two vcps so he can you know collect them all they're like you know pokemon he was saying in the winning channel dude that that guy he is an absolute machine man he he labs so much vmware and he makes up his own use cases like he hadn't had any experience with with nsx yet he wanted to learn it uh so he figured out a use case for it in his home lab he's got the vmug advantage which includes nsx licensing and he spun that stuff up and he was telling me like after i spun it up and got it working i tore it all down and did it again and then i tore it all down and i did it again and that's just how he gets the experience and lends it and he mastered it enough to pass the exam so that's awesome and just so for listeners just so you all know uh it's not a home lab it's a home data center at this point the uh the guy has a nexus 9k in his house yes like we're talking about you know silly it's just awesome i i just now that he owns a house yeah he has more room for more data center stuff and i think he's got plans now is is um does he have a fiance or is he married that's your girlfriend girlfriend girlfriend okay that what a woman that's all i got to say i know i know buying all this stuff and and she's you know signing for delivery carrying the stuff down i'm like dude put a ring on it man yeah yeah yeah just like he's gonna love him just a little hint taylor right um alex alex with a k passed his ccna congratulations alex ooh i got me i got me one of these oh no is that uh is that andy's goat oh gosh so congratulations alex for passing to ccna we got service type framed past the az900 az900 uh nargarot got a promotion to a network security engineer nice congratulations what did he was did he say what he came from i think that one uh was coming from the knock from the knock too so that's pretty big you're the engineer yeah that's a good jump um nargarot uh oh wait that was narcotic got the promotional network security engineer uh command steve 22 accepted a position at their current company uh as a network security architect oh wow okay pretty decent jump that's a good that's a good one coming from a frontline help desk whoa whoa he went from he went from help desk to architect yep and and he said in the same company that he works for nice yeah that good job on that one yeah right that's a jump right there i like that killing it uh and then andre i think it was just today or yesterday oh yeah he got it yeah the gcia i saw that that is awesome now gci certified so congratulations to everyone we will do another little goat screen oh gosh amazon nine bucks i got two of them my son carries one around makes his cream all the time these things are so much fun i'm telling you we're gonna get them and we're gonna put the a1 logo on it and then we're gonna give them away can we can we legally do that probably not yeah probably sorry we don't we don't worry it's kind of cute it comes with like a little storybook too like that's all about screaming goats really okay yeah yeah it's pretty funny that's interesting that that's what andy got right that yeah that goat yeah okay said like him and his co-workers share the screaming goat and they get like irritated they you know scream and andy has sent them around to his fellow coworkers and now he's got our community hooked on them nice i like it awesome so this week we're doing something a little different um a few weeks ago we recorded with a different podcast so this is a little bit of a crossover and we're gonna re-run what we recorded with them so it was with uh frank patakala it was the it factor podcast and so it's it's really cool it's a community of av folks uh that understand that you know there's a lot of i.t and what they do in av and um i've certainly had to touch a lot of av over the years and their community is full of people that you know are trying to make the leap to the i.t world frank himself has a really deep it and av background he got his ccna at 17. yeah that's pretty wild yeah but we had a great conversation with frank and um you know we we learned quite a bit about his community and and hopefully we we get some people coming over from there and hopefully folks that listen to our podcast we'll we'll check out the uh the it factor and we'll put all the links and stuff in the show notes we'll put frank's information for twitter so you can check him out and follow him uh one of the other things that they participate in is uh av in the am hashtag so a couple times a month on sunday mornings you can follow the hashtag av in the am and jump in on the conversation um there was a pretty network engineer kind of focused conversation a few weeks ago that you know a lot of people from our community jumped in on and it was a pretty good time yeah and i think like uh one thing to take away from you know av people and you know wanting to come into our world uh especially you know from a network perspective is all their devices like tvs and you know any of those their sound systems that they're that they're running now um it's it's the iot stuff right i mean that's that's essentially like you know where i work we've we've got iot stuff all over the state right and and so we have to figure out how to we have to figure out how to mesh our worlds together and yeah you know work in harmony basically like do you put them on the guest network do you you know that kind of stuff like i don't need your roku tv on my you know on my uh my main network taking up all my bandwidth that kind of thing so uh it no it's definitely an interesting merge i think uh between those two those two uh whatever you want to say entities or whatever but i mean it makes total sense like it's all over the enterprise like you said the roku tvs uh apple tvs all that stuff uh dedicated pcs and conference rooms so people can log in give the presentations um you know i've worked in places that had larger conference rooms that had speaker systems and you know vcrs dvd players hdmi cables just hanging around everywhere to plug into laptops and all that stuff i used to work for a school district and had to do all the av for all the classrooms so they had the overhead projectors so the teachers could you know teach interact with the students do all sorts of stuff so it makes total sense you know i it sounds like within that community a lot of people kind of draw the line like there's ite and then there's av and and for me it's just always been kind of one big blur yeah yeah they're part i mean you know they're they're machines that are participating on your network at this point they're not on their own thing anymore yeah yeah totally so awesome well uh we hope you enjoy this episode of the art of network engineering and it factor crossover and we will catch you guys next week see you see ya hello everyone and welcome to this very special episode it's not just an episode of it factor this is the crossover event of the year this is a bunch of amazing folks from the art of network engineering they have their own podcast show they've decided to come on to the av side of things and have a conversation with us and we've decided to tread the lines and you know share where we where we can go together on this uh i'm frank patakala the host of it factor uh and i will not be a host today we're just gonna have a fun little conversation i'm gonna pass it on to the folks at the art of network engineering welcome guys welcome hey good evening frank thank you having us thanks man uh i guess we'll do introductions one i mean aj if you want to go first uh so all our listeners can know who you are yeah absolutely so uh my name is aj murray i am one of the co-hosts here at the art of network engineering podcast uh and my day job is a senior deployment engineer for a integrator nice yep where do you live aj oh that's a that's a good question aaron thank you i live in no i mean don't give them your address or anything general area is fine yeah since we're crossing over to another podcast i don't want to you know spread it spread it too far uh i live in vermont up in beautiful new england nice go ahead dan so my name is dan richards i live in nashville tennessee and i am a network administrator at an insurance company there and i'm also a co-host on the podcast all right the art of network engineering podcast yes that that podcast guys feel free to pitch it a hundred times because i'm going to be saying i t stock for every every two minutes so frank i have a button it's like the easy button it's just like art of network engineering podcast yes yes it's actually dan's voice too which is ironic but uh i guess i'm last so um and my name is aaron weiler uh at aaron engineered on twitter aaronengineer.com aaron engineered on instagram however wherever books are sold and i am also a co-host at the art of network engineering i live right across the street from where a lot of the cisco live events are in beautiful downtown san diego nice doesn't get any more networking than that not joining us tonight is andy laptop he's he's coaching his son's uh baseball game but i wouldn't want to let introductions go by without letting folks know that there's a fourth person he does exist we do acknowledge him he does exist well i mean i think it's a good change of pace because i i watched the previous podcast episode and it seemed like it was just the two of you guys so you know this is gonna be a different one yeah you know and there's one out of the two of us that you might get sick of quicker and you know is his laugh his last name rhymes with uh rap teff so there you go guys talk smack about the guy who's not here this is good thanks for having us on though dude we really appreciate it i mean this is one heck of a like i feel like this is like a long time coming like crossover it's not really crossover either like it's almost like a a gray area yes yes and that's that's it's funny to say that i mean i had to say this uh if we did this a week ago i would be frank patakala design engineer at diversified uh currently i am in between jobs literally in between jobs and i hope to make an announcement monday uh but today's monday oh my lord you take a look the 19th is when i'll be making my announcements i i'm not sure i'm guessing this episode might air sooner on av nation uh if it does check out you know my twitter or my linkedin on monday so uh right now i'm just a podcast host with you guys that's all i am just i like how you said just right i take a lot of pride in this no i think podcasts like yourselves uh and hopefully what i aspire to be is sources of information informal information right because you can get your education and your videos from your youtubes and there's there's the amazing content producers out there that are teaching you every day about networking and av and all that good stuff right but the alternative is people like us who just come in and just record and share what's coming to our minds and just be that firsthand experience and that's what i liked about your podcast and especially i'm going to give a huge shout out to your discord group your server is amazing a lot of wonderful people on there uh it's a community and i'm a huge fan of that i believe that's how true learning happens being a part of a community it's you know you just absorb it by osmosis you know you just hang around with good people you learn something totally totally no you hit on something there too that was like something i actually never really thought of was because this was not our goal to begin with being that our goal wasn't like to be completely different it was more like you know what can we do to help and and i think accidentally what ended up happening was that you know you say it's like a real conversation and it feels just kind of like we're just hanging out or whatever i mean we quite literally are right like and for some of us it's like our time to hang out during the week like this is like hanging out um and just like at a water cooler this is all you would talk about but i think the thing that that sticks out after what you said is that you know the community aspect of it is like it's you don't need the book smarts from us but you somehow like through osmosis get those street smarts yeah right like like we have a lot of people in our discord group like you just mentioned that you know they'll give you tips and tricks on like you know maybe they're three steps ahead of you and where you want to be in your career or maybe they're the step aheady or maybe they just step behind you and they're like okay somebody and i see this all the time and i'm sure you have two frankie where's like a like somebody says hey i have an interview tomorrow you know um it's gonna be a technical interview like you know what kind of tips do you guys have and it's like you know guys that are doing the interviews chime in and they're like here's what i would ask here's what i would look for right so it's like it ends up being almost like filling in the gaps i guess is the best way to put it right through all that like other technical stuff that you could find on the internet couldn't have said it better couldn't have said it better yeah and you know that's that's one of my beliefs you know so when i took uh it factor over uh last year one of my goals is i believe there's an information technology blanket that exists across you know the spaces whatever corporate retail whatever you're doing and we are all different arms of it organs so to speak who fulfill certain needs we are distinct in our identities but there are times when we need to work together there are times when we need to understand each other and it doesn't help by separating out hey i'm a network guy i'm not going to talk to you or i'm an av guy that's on that side of thing that kind of animoxity that kind of you know uh infighting never leads to a pro for project so i my hope is that by having people like you on shows like this and getting people on the av side listen that these are individuals just like us who face the exact same problems that we do on their side of things so the best way to solve those things is open conversation i don't think there's any technology that has been found to date that can solve or you know can substitute for open conversation totally no that's a that's a good point too and i just i was just thinking about it t2 and i was thinking about how difficult i t can be yeah and i was like and i was thinking about av and i was but i was thinking about av in a very simple sense right like like just that like okay let's just say my home entertainment system right and i'm not talking about corporate av here right but it is all i t right every single thing i have in my house is connected and i was thinking about man that that's pretty difficult right like figuring out how to hook up a wi-fi network and then i thought about my parents and they can't even work the dvr remote you know what i mean right and so it's strange to me because we've had all these it advances like in wi-fi and stuff like that where it's like it's like it makes things easier like there was that that wps button a while back where you know you could press it on your little home router and then press it on somewhere else real quick and then all of a sudden they were paired or whatever but in av it's like we start getting more and more stuff that's connected and that only makes it more complicated because av is interesting to me because there's so many dependencies right like i think i think it was interesting the way that like um the way i was thinking about like how iot's kind of taken over and and av is the same way and like network engineers like us have to worry about stuff like the like av stuff that we didn't before you know what i mean like and i'm and we're talking speakers like whatever like i i you know almost you name things on the network you know everything i could literally put together a project that is completely networked and i would be doing an av project but you could be configuring the switch because that's your expertise you're a networking engineer and you can be configuring it and i'm just putting my stuff on your network right and all and i think that is precisely the point that i'm trying to say i mean there's no need to you know draw lines in a technology platform anymore because everybody has to understand something on the other side and you know it's it's about having the resources to answer those questions i mean i'm i'm going to ask dan i'm very curious because he's a network administrator and i'm sure you got to deal with some form of ab vendors and you know um and i'll tell you this i'm gonna say i'm gonna i don't know if you guys know this i don't know if you've heard this from an av guy we tend to hate network administrators because i didn't know that yeah i didn't know i did not know why what's the beef so the beef is you guys say no to everything right that's fair that's fair right and so well i can tell you as a network engineer that we don't like the av guys because they always suggest opening up the security and that's why there you go yeah there's no 2.1x baby this is my point so i come from an i.t background and i kind of you know i'm that i straddle that line between av and i t and i'm on av projects i'm the it network consultant they come in and you know i kind of solved this and the way i do it is by telling you guys guys i have to put this device on your network in order for it to work but you need to open up xyz port for me that's the only way i can do it and i have never had a network administrator come back and say i'm not going to do it they say yes i get it if the company needs it my job is to do it for you i'll fix it for you but if i come and say hey i'm going to throw this bunch of gear on your network you need to make it you need i i it needs to work you're not going to you're not going to find that very helpful so i think what i did there is the language and trying to talk in terms that would be acceptable to network administrators in order to do that i need to know networking right yeah so for me i the first thing i'm going to ask you is what's your source what's your destination and what port do you need and that that's going to answer a lot of my questions right there so if you already have that you know ahead of time before you're like hey i'm just going to throw this stuff on your network and i need to talk you know uh yeah come come with that little checklist of like source destination import exactly does anybody has anybody ever come to you though with like extensive stuff so i'm just thinking of a project that i did in the past and i know frank's to get uh super excited about this probably so we were putting a bunch of tvs in wrigley field and so the delivery method was iptv so basically we had to get the network team to accept our you know hand off like our mpeg stream right and we also had to have multicast set up on all the switches and routers right so right so huge huge integra this is right right in your wheelhouse frank because without people knowing both it's like uh i can imagine somebody trying to put a video stream through a network and just scratching the hell out of their head right yep several of our folks have done that you know um i'm not going to name names but i still remember how somebody went in with a a switch a regular switch and they thought hey my uh rack my av rack needs five network ports let me just put this hub on to it and plug all five together and it shut down the entire network for half the building and we had security people running in and it was a mess it was the worst thing that could happen there they were going to call the cops they didn't know what was going on they literally thought they were under attack so i i feel you there yeah that's funny let's have you ever had to do that for anybody or it's just no no no the funny thing is so we actually have a guy that that works with us who uh he does all the av stuff there so there you go he actually works at the place though you have a frank yeah yeah we have a frank but he's just a part of our team he's not a he's not a contractor or anything good good good yeah see that's that's the point right i mean uh understanding that these are individuals on either side and they're just trying to do the job my my favorite analogy that i give to people who complain about networks is you're going into another man's house and saying can i feed your child something that i just brought and i cook and obviously even if you're a nice person and if they like you they will still want to know what's in it they want to know how it can affect your child yeah right you're going into another man's house here so follow their rules this is what i say that's hilarious that that's what held an analogy dude nailed it i'll take it i'll take it thank you because this is because when you come into my network that's my baby yeah it is it is i mean it's a good analogy people people don't understand that it is your baby because you've seen it grow you've seen it crash you've seen the problems you've solved it and finally you have it stable and here comes a guy and says i have this super cool camera that will give you the most amazing experience let me just put it on there you know super cool i agree but it could crash your network so you know and and the same thing on my side like i i don't want people tinkering with the with my dsps or my programming systems or my control touch panels i like it untouched right so it's about understanding the architecture and it's understanding that you're part of a group and av in my opinion has traditionally not played that because in the past right when you had your your sdi or your you know your cable tvs and your you know your bmc's and that layer of analog av it didn't need to interact with your i.t systems but that has all changed i mean changed for a while now everything is on the network systems are all ip based there's some form of interaction with the network every day every av manufacturer out there is using the cloud to kind of you know leverage cloud abilities and cloud deployments they're trying to do configurations in advance so they're all doing the things that everybody else is doing so it's important that every you know the av folks catch up and so part of my hopes today is i really want to get you know i want to get the dl on you guys i want to understand how you guys got into network engineering because if i'm an aspiring av tech i've been an av for five years for two years and i like networking i'd like to be networking how do i end up there i mean i know i'm going to hear completely random stories here because that's the beauty of technology nobody ever starts off thinking they're going to be a network administrator or a network engineer or you know or an av person for that matter they kind of just end up there i feel that's a story for most technology professions uh but i want to hear from you guys i'm sure you know everybody on the itv would listen to city fashion would love to hear that i'm sure of that all right so i i can take that one frank uh i can start off there so um out of high school i went to college i was just going to community college didn't really know what i wanted to be when i grew up and i took a c plus programming class and i enjoyed it but i didn't enjoy it to the point where i didn't think you know i didn't want to do that as my career right so i i switched from a general ed to an i.t degree one of the last classes i took was networking and that's where i really fell into networking you know i could see uh it was something that was sustainable you know career-wise uh and it was something that you know networking is always going to be around because devices need to talk to other devices that's never going to go away uh and i enjoyed it i enjoyed you know learning about it it was advancing uh and especially now today like it's it's crazy to see how far networking has come just in the last five years but it's it's definitely my passion and so uh for most of my career i've been a generalist um i've done it manager assist admin network admin you know a little bit of everything uh and you know with that i got a lot of great experience but i never really focused on anything and a few years ago i decided like i really want to turn my attention to networking so i got my ccna got some other networking certs joined a company and that is an integrator so you know if you want to buy some technology you come see us and then if you want us to install it i'll show up and learn your environment and help you you know adopt the solution that you've purchased and so my focus is networking we do a lot of cisco networking mainly everything that i touch with cisco networking but you know if you buy juniper i'll do that too awesome awesome awesome yeah and you know please go around the room i'd love to hear your origin story i mean this is a crossover movement so i always love dance it's like so there i was sitting at the bus stop with a box of chocolates i've heard that one before really i know you have it yeah for me so um i i i got into video games right and and then i got and then i progressed into i liked hosting video games and so i got into learning about like uh you know dedicated servers and and whatnot how you could host a a you know like so back in my day was halo right halo combat evolved the first one call of duty those those games um that so then i started hosting those games for friends and whatnot and i was i don't know i just took off right there because like you you know whenever you're hosting a server you have to get into your routers config right and you have to do port forwarding and that kind of stuff and and and as i started learning more about that i just i just went down the rabbit hole and here i am so but i i went to a uh a tech-centered college like um i don't know if you guys remember itt tech uh oh rest in peace yeah but uh that's that's uh that's the college i went to and i got a uh associates there and it was in computer networking so that it that's whenever i just took off big time right um and then i got a good job at the company i'm at now and i've just super dive super deep dived in into the whole networking so i've done a little bit of server administration as well i started that whenever i i was doing server administration when i first started in also the network side of the house then our team split and now i'm just solely focused on networking so nice very nice you know i too have a video game origin story you know anytime we start telling stories it's so funny because dan and i always i feel like there's this weird overlap where we almost have the exact same life in a lot of places like i'm pretty sure i was owning you in video games back in like the late 90s early 2000s i definitely think we had a link there first of all the fps i was getting on that voodoo three video card that i had oh i gotta get this i know so yeah i started out video games too and it was very similar but like i got really good really fast so i was traveling around to different land centers and i was in tournaments and stuff i played uh the original counter-strike when it first came out actually half-life deathmatch and then counter-strike beta one day one beta one i bought i downloaded counter strike uh and i didn't look back and so all the way up until 1.6 i played professionally um and i was in like the local american um cyber athlete professional leagues and stuff like that and pretty well known in that community yeah it was cool it was cool so pretty well known in that community and that was like late 90s early 2000s and then uh i i always remember this is the funniest thing to me i always remember going to land centers and like or orland parties and we go to land parties like dan was talking about and you had to go into your router settings and figure out what the heck was going on right and i always remembered like at home we'd all be like okay i have a 192 one you know you just remember that stuff and you're like okay i have a 192.168. so that's what i need to do everywhere i go that that that well then you go to a land center and i remember it's clear as day i can even like picture the scenery and the guy looked at me and he goes so you have to put your own ip address in and i'm like of course i got this i know exactly he goes so 10.10 and i'm like whoa buddy what ten not you could do that like what does that even mean he's like i don't have time to explain all this to you and i was like but me i'm just kind of guy that doesn't like to do stuff just because somebody's telling me to do it you know what i mean i got to figure out i got to figure it out so anyway i ended up getting a job at the cable company because i thought the only the only cool way to play video games at that time was if you had a cable modem which was not a very uh i would say like widespread thing at that time right it was like the neighborhoods were unique all that kind of stuff so like the fact that i had like a high-speed connection although it was only 128 down right um and then 256 and then 768 you know the gold package uh i was blowing people out of the water you know what i mean super low pings and stuff like that and and i wanted a job at the cable company because i wanted to know how the cable modem worked and so i went to the gable company they kept turning me down and i eventually got a job there like they didn't want to hire me i eventually got a job there and basically haven't looked back since i've been everything from field tech to i was the very first charter business charter business technician which is now spectrum um in the st louis area shout out to mitch our producer here um and then i was uh hired by another cable company and then another cable company so you know sales engineer trainer all that so for me it's always been kind of like a i started very early at hands on and then moved into like the conceptual side of things and like design and uh architecture and stuff like that amazing and you know see there's there's a common thread for me here because if you ever come into an av community thing and you know if you get into our twitter storms and you know i had aj on the sunday morning was that we were the the sunday morning morning a.m uh yeah you'll see uh this is it's very similar to how people got into av as well i mean they were guitarists or they were playing in a band or they were doing something there was a passion and i'm not saying you didn't do well in your passion but it kind of evolved into a profession you know something that you liked eventually became something that you could do every day and that's how a lot of av people are so i think there are similarities i think this is a a theme here and people need to understand that because i've my mission in the av space is to tell people that people across the aisle as network admins or network administrators or network engineers are no different than us they all came from varied backgrounds and kind of came to be where they are they don't come with a chip on their shoulder it's just you guys are talking two different languages and once you get that when to get across that you'll find more similarities then you're different so i see that and i'm glad you guys shared your stories that's that's amazing uh same thing with me i mean i was on the i.t side uh i'm into cyber security if i wasn't doing av i'd probably be a cyber security professional that's where my passions at and av was one of my first jobs right i i did av and then i stopped that i went into cyber security and then when i started looking around for cyber security jobs i actually ended up in an av company and i thought well there goes all my cyber security what am i going to do with all this lo and behold av gears on the network so there's cyber security you need to understand the principles you need to have those conversations i was i love networking by the way i mean i built my first pc when i was around 12 and i loved i loved everything about pc i still do it's like it's my it's my passion you know i love computers i love the networks i got cisco certified when i was 17. you know and whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa i love networking and it kind of has been a side of me and i never realized that i would be able to use it within the av space because av has evolved so much in the past you could easily come in and become an a b tech and not know anything about networks but i think we're way past that and any av professional needs to understand this and here's what here's the thing and i'm trying to say this and it you know in good faith to all my av brethren out there that network professionals are just like us in which they've taken the time put the effort to learn what they're and they're still learning you know because networking is also evolving you can't be a network professional who knew something 10 years ago and say i'm good enough for now no you guys are putting in the time i i followed some of aj's starts and you know his serp journey and it's amazing you know he has to we're all people with families and hopefully we have a life outside of all of this and we still find time to study and do the exams and that's what i'm that's what i'm trying to say right it is possible to become cross-trained it is possible to you know kind of spread your wings and gain that knowledge and i'm glad you guys are vindicating my my faith yeah that we are all technology that's that's what i would say i mean there are people who say you know av is different even you guys right your journey into networking could have very well gotten become a journey into av if the passion for your router had become the passion for your display and think wow how did these images happen how is this thing projected you could very well become a navy it's just you know fork of the road and you saw the router and you like the settings your network engineers you know so that's how close we are in terms of industries and that's what hopefully people understand that the language needs to be consistent we need to learn from each other and you know be successful together you know it it goes beyond like the work life balance like you said too because you kind of hit on two points the passion like turns into something right um i think like aj and i were talking about this earlier uh i was curious we have we have a big thing in the in the it community which you've seen because you're in our discord channel it's like our home labs okay so this is the thing right like we we certainly can't get enough to do at work you know we got to go home and play with it do the same thing again well that's what i was going to ask so so give us an idea then of like an av version of the home like look at dan's back there's it's insane he's got like three different 19 minutes dude he's insane yeah home labs so give us an idea what's an av home lab look like i mean you guys got to have a lot of cool stuff right like we we do i mean if you're fortunate enough to work for a company that interacts with multiple manufacturers yeah you get you get to interact with all kinds of products and you know microphones cameras speakers projectors displays there's a whole you know a whole array of very cool solutions out there right and it's it's funny and even like we're at a fork in a road there as well because as far as corporate av is concerned a lot of that is being gobbled up by the new uc platforms right i think uc is its own beast uc is coming in and they're just a platform we're on zoom right now we're using zoom's platform and zoom has its list of zoom certified hardware zoom certified devices what that means is that you plug it into a zoom ecosystem and essentially it works right so in a sense it takes away the creativity of an av professional because it's all done for you in a sense but it also gives you the opportunity to start thinking out of the box because it's about the experience like av people always talk about what your experience is like and again this is one of my arguments with everyone right i'm a school of thought that everybody has experiences in every technology platform like you as a network professional you have an experience too right when you were gaming if your internet your network was slow your experience is terrible so a lot of different factors add to that experience the display has to be great your system has to be fast enough your network has to be able to hold up it's a combination of all these things that bring your experience so we kind of like to deal in those experiences but the experiences is a universal thing so our typical home labs or our labs would be all about audio gear and you know uh yeah i don't want to turn off my background because i don't want you to see all the stuff that i have here it's a mess people are going to rob you or what you gotta do you know i swear if somebody were to try that i don't think they'd find anything worthwhile because it's like a bunch of stuff you know what what is all this right like you know like a cisco switch yeah i have my own cisco switch setup here too so what i kind of do is like i get these cool microphones i get these devices i plug them into the network see how it plays so that's that's my thing now you could go into other people if you go on our twitters you know i'm going to name drop chris neto here because i think off late he's been on a crazy technology binge because he's changing his lighting setup he's changing his audio setup because he wants to sound better he wants to look better on camera he wants to have the perfect lighting so every day he posts pictures and he updates you with the stuff he's doing that's av for you av can be anything now it could also be a guy with a guitar sitting and playing and strumming away you know it's like av experiences are quite varied uh but a professional standpoint it depends a lot on what you're doing and like you said aj av has so many dependencies and we're kind of in it in different things right so depending on where you're at my home lab and your home lab could look the same it could be the same thing you know it's just like we're putting different things on our network so uh awesome question it's it there's so many similarities i can't even begin to start saying how you know honestly i think anybody can transition from one field to the other given the right amount of training in the community i think that i mean that's that's the message that i'd like to share you know totally i think this is i think av is just another discipline right in in the the genre of what we would call like technology and i agree we started off by saying like everything's just kind of gray you know it's like it's kind of all over it's my thought that if you're if you learn how to absorb and and learn learn how to learn learn how to learn how to technology focus learning right like you're into that kind of stuff i don't see any issue with someone making just a clean transition from point a to point b because it's maybe different acronyms and stuff like that but the the idea is to the same and frank i think you've been saying this the whole time you're just trying to move information from one point to another whether it's a video stream an audio stream um you know or or data or you know lights whatever it doesn't doesn't it doesn't matter it's all the same and especially now when folks like to say the the dirty words like iot all the time and stuff like that but you know that's you right av is iot for the you know i mean there's lots of other stuff sensors and stuff like that but like you're the cool version of iot like let's just be for real exactly and you know and it's not about saying that uh you know network is just the platform no it's it's another ecosystem it's like all right you're taking all your cool stuff and you gotta go with these guys you know it's it's about understanding those codependencies and finding that balance uh excellent point and so it's like you know i you know i really didn't want to say anything because you just hit the nail on his head you just said the words i always like to hear we're all technology and you know on that note i honestly i don't know what else to say i'm you know i'm really happy that we got the chat like this and this has been a completely unscripted unplanned episode of the it factor and the art of network engineering you know just going to show that technology's technology uh if you want to do one discipline as opposed to the other find the community that serves your interests have a chat with people and i'm sure there's going to be plenty of people out there who's happy to guide you totally thanks for having us man yeah awesome yeah i mean uh you know you guys should check out all these cool folks on their twitters uh please share your you know wonderful information and your discord and all that good stuff i want people to hear it and be part of it yeah absolutely so uh you can follow me on twitter at no blinkyblinky and you can follow the art of network engineering at art of neteng yep and what's your website noblinkyblinky.com blog.noblinkeyblinky.com yeah yeah that's a very famous blog in case you haven't stumbled upon it in your journey through the internet yet yeah right especially today yeah yeah man and then um you can check out the art of network engineering.com we've got lots of blog articles on there we have a lot of people from our community that contribute to the blog which makes it that much better um you know we talk about stuff like technology preparing for an interview you know we kind of cover the whole gamut so it's a really cool place to to check out and learn some stuff consume some stuff and you can also get links to all your favorite podcatchers and uh subscribe to our podcast nice nice nice yeah i mean aaron if you want to share your uh twitter i know you did at the beginning but feel free to share it again yeah of course of course yeah i'm uh i'm uh at erin engineered everywhere books are sold so just google it baby i'm uh i'm also on the twitters i don't i don't get on there too much but when he does when i do there's some gold there right now if you guys didn't hear that it's it's literally at howdy packet like like a texan with a packet if that makes any sense yeah but yeah it's that that's what ha what's happens when a texan starts to ping you know how do you pack oh my god it's a howdy packet nice so the idea was a hello packet right yeah exactly uh that was actually uh our community voted on that one so so that's right yeah yeah no it's a sum of its parts for sure and and dan is like the head of it because he gracefully let the entire community pick his name and we gave him a couple of choices but that was because for some reason in 2020 he wasn't on twitter yet yeah wow we are in technology right i can't yeah i don't know how that works yeah something like that but it's awesome i'm frank patakawa uh you can find me on twitter frank patakawa uh the podcast that i host is it factor and we are on av nation tv you can also find me on linkedin and instagram um i'm i'm open to communicate with anyone i love talking technology and this has absolutely been amazing uh i'd love to do this again sometime just a casual conversation of different technologies coming together and trying to understand their similarities this has been so awesome thank you so much guys for making the time for this you know i hope no thanks our communities our respective communities have learned at least something uh about ourselves and you know if anyone wants to try i'm sure all of us are open ears thank you thank you thank you thank you hey everyone this is aj if you like what you heard today then make sure you subscribe to our podcast and your favorite podcatcher smash that bell icon to get notified of all of our future episodes also follow us on twitter and instagram we are at art of netench that's art of n-e-t-e-n-g you can also find us on the web at artofnetworkengineering.com where we post all of our show notes you can read blog articles from the co-hosts and guests and also a lot more news and info from the networking world thanks for listening you