this is the art of network engineering podcast in this podcast we'll explore keys 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 and tonight joining me is andy andy how you doing hello how's it going oh my god he's you can't see him he has he just put readers on and if you don't know what readers are they're for old people because they can't read is that you is that you ball the icing on the cake is that the sticker is still on that which makes them extremely returnable at this point i'm good man let's make it really easy to read out of that sticker in the way i'm good i'm happy to be on here it was an annoying day so this is the highlight of my day i'm good to be i'm good man how you doing shoveling out your car wasn't the highlight of your day nah now what what if i told you that there were places not just on this planet but in this country that don't snow what would you say yeah i saw your twitter picture aaron no you know what i had the i had the best intentions with that i really did because i could really be doing that to you guys every day i was tr i was really trying to send it out there and i was even like hey man y'all can hang out with me if you come here you know the invitation is that i am i am this close i am this close i am so sick of winter right now the downside is you may fall into the sea one day but it's worth it because it's sunny and green so yep you know yeah there's at least it's warm water it's a thing about that it's the pacific is kind of chilly very good yeah the water fun fact the water flows down from alaska in that direction yeah which is the opposite of like florida working and you know what kind of fish love cold water aj fresh water great white sharks so when you fall in the water in the earthquake you get eaten by a great boy it's just all bad it's not it's a dramatic i would love to live where you live uh aaron that's that's all my life you know what's strange about it though i was just thinking about this like it makes it really weird to be like a nerdy tech person because you know how much time we spend indoors i just felt like because like when i was in high school and stuff like when i first got into computers i lived in the midwest so they're like right outside of st louis and it was just so easy because you know you have like seven months there where you know even even in the in the summer when it's like blistering hot you just have so much time where it's like it's not only acceptable to be inside but it's like dude what else am i going to be doing and so that you know that made it easier and now i almost feel like i'm just not living up to its full potential because i i need to be out all the time but i also you know everybody keeps screaming in my ear five seconds you need to be studying this so it's like ah what am i supposed to do so last resort is take your dang book outside and go read but for the record aj and i have not told you to go study it's not coming from us true i think we should i think we should all quit studying in 2021. hey i'm down with that actually i've had it i'll get a new job it's been two months i've had it i give up all right michael i got to learn python this year or not 2021 compared to last year that's for sure well you don't have to you got all the search there's none left yeah seriously i know but after after studying so much and getting so many certifications to to not be studying right now it just feels kind of awkward but i'm so busy at work does it feel bad do i feel guilty i i wouldn't say guilty it's just after being in like study mode for so long to not be in study mode it's just like what do i do with my hands and you know when when you get out of study mode sometimes it's hard to get back in so yeah i'm finding that right now too because i like i'm so fried like from working all day on the project i'm working on that i've picked up a nintendo switch and i started playing zelda breath of the wild oh here we go now we got something to talk about we'll see yeah we'll spare the podcast but just know that aj and i are going to be talking about nintendo switches for the rest of the night sorry we sort of hijacked you in the middle of your introduction there aj where we apologize aaron how you doing i'm well thank you appreciate it excellent excellent good to hear from you we gotta i heard word on the street is we got about a bazillion w's out there we do we do uh i love to hear it i had to go all the way back uh to the last one that i announced and uh tonight i have nine wins to announce with some very exciting stuff a lot of winning going on in hashtag winning in the discord channel so without further ado here we go bill version three build up three okay okay definite associate oh hey that's not easy that's not easy that's not easy um comptia brian confiti brian uh started the management program at cisco so conft brian is uh compti with your se he has his own podcast it's a great podcast very focused on cisco products uh it looks like it's sponsored by cisco uh and it's it's actually not um even though the i was having a conversation with him the other day he said like the the logo came from the marketing department and it's a great line kind of thing but it's a great podcast they they have uh they had susie we on there last year uh it's it's a pretty good one so but he was accepted into the management program at cisco so um once he completes that he'll be eligible for promotion to management positions oh sweet so that's like a that's like a work thing that you can do where you just kind of like get into a program and they like it's like it's like future leaders mentorship program type thing yep oh cool exactly that's huge congrats uh ver taylor so my buddy taylor oh taylor i'm not here what'd he do now not him again dude yeah me too you know we're not announcing amazon and it's done it's it's not a sir he didn't get an answer but he did get engineer of the year ah wow wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait red river i work at all right yeah i'm gonna yeah that yeah as a procedure he works awfully hard he has some very difficult customers he's not afraid to jump on any problem definitely well deserved engineer of the year for ver taylor thank you andre andre was promoted to tech sergeant otherwise known as e6 in the u.s air force our favorite butcher turned network engineer chris deadman roulette oh yeah passed his comptia itf plus exam that is the it fundamentals exam by comptia congratulations cool very nice nice little well-rounded skill set there right yeah don't forget about those printers boys and girls nice uh ethan jackson our buddy in the uk ethan jackson yeah uh he got his first network engineering job yeah wow wait wait wait do we say congratulations to that or good luck congratulations question mark enjoy it while you can congratulations and condolences on your first number first and certainly not last that's right that's right uh the vpn bloke passed the devnet associate so congratulations associates vpn that's the hotness right at least yeah that's the hardness uh casey valde casey valde screen named casey valde passed the tkt ii exam for where where they work so that is a technical knowledge exam so is it like uh like within his company yeah okay within the organization they they have these tkt exams and uh he said that that's like a stepping stone for additional pay and nice awesome man congratulations yeah yeah everybody loves more money right who doesn't love more money i don't know i i know somebody said more money more problems i don't know that was people find that to be the issue hey but look i don't see him get like dishing it all out you know what i mean like he's still got it you know it's clearly not that bad right he's okay all right and the last one for this week uh mag magnetars magnetars as i'm going to go with magnetometers uh got the a position uh knock analyst okay nice interesting that sounds like an interesting job what do you think do you guys know what that is like what does that entail maybe andy you probably know better than anybody uh just looking at like logs and like you know i would no idea you know i want to say it's an administrative knock roll but i could be totally wrong i mean i was i was in a knock and i was a network engineer but right you know how it goes they have all these different titles right different companies he might be a knock guy that's true who knows right that's true rock on knock is great there was a couple out there too that on twitter that i saw floating around it just escapes me right now um if i think of it during the podcast i will say something but as always though if you guys have w's and you're not on the discord and you're not putting in the win channel just find us somewhere and we will shout you out the proof is oh man so andy you just dug your car out of like six feet of snow right yeah about a foot a cop knocked on my door and yelled at me because i left it on the street and it was a snow emergency today in my defense it was a very busy day i was very busy at work the kids were home because school was closed my wife was very busy you know it was one of those just hold on by the seat of your pants and get through the day and hopefully nobody's bleeding at the end so yeah like it's the last thing you want to do though just just get on this podcast and hang out with me and aj or no i really i genuinely look forward to this this is a highlight of my uh of my week and my wife knows that and supports it which is nice like she she she was actually yeah so all right this might come off wrong but she's the only woman i've ever met that shovel snow and when the cop knocked at the door she told me she was gonna go do it because she knows the podcast is important to me so oh my gosh that's partner that's when i texted you guys and said i'm gonna be a little late because you know i i gotta yeah i can't let you yeah but wait you you quickly changed that to just kidding it'll be five minutes does that mean you sent your wife out there well truth truth be told i was so annoyed that i went into beast mode and just moved a mountain hammered yeah really and then gone the gas through a pile of yeah it was it was dramatic it was dramatic to watch and all the snow is now sitting in the middle of the street because i was pissed oh my god that's that happened that's why it went quickly but it's funny like we were talking before the podcast started about like um like the weather and stuff which is why that got brought up and obviously the first part of this when i was mentioning like being stuck inside and stuff it's like you know obviously we were all at some point just kind of like driven to stay at home and what's i don't know if this is a coincidence or not but have you guys ever heard the term cdn content delivery network yeah exactly yeah so have you not noticed i don't know if like these programs got accelerated because we're all stuck here but okay so nbc peacock right um there was another one that came out uh the discovery plus right that has all the hdtv and stuff like that oh yeah yeah we signed up right so netflix was the first right like they were the ceo weren't they kind of the first to market like i think so you know i think so as far as like cdns go like unless you want to consider like youtube because i think and i i don't know for sure i think a bulk of the quote unquote internet traffic was youtube traffic prior to like your netflix's and and stuff like that yeah yeah youtube up there for sure yeah it it just brings up an interesting thing it's like you know there's there's just so much saturating out there now and i was looking through the channels and stuff and i was like okay so this is like an old cable tv thing so like you know bear with me for like two seconds so people always ask me your questions like they're weird to me they're always like hey uh i just want to completely cut the cord right and i want to have like a la carte channels yeah that's the drill right that's the drink so apple was supposed to do it and they had such a hard time with the networks that they can't you can't well they could but the networks won't allow it because well that's what i mean but yeah yeah that's yeah that's what i mean so yeah the whole point is like you know back in the day i hope this opens up like a whole pandora's box in anybody's head that's like listening if you live in america i don't know this is the same across like europe or or you know africa or australia or any of those other uh countries or continents like i'm just it's interesting thing just by way of like how this television has evolved right because television now is a data product it's an internet product right so as network engineers we care about tv strangely i always cared about tv andy you you did at 1.2 right you you were you you were actually dealing with both at the same time so i'm very familiar with how they work so i always thought it was interesting that that folks because i would do service calls and people would be like hey yeah i mean i want hbo but like why are you giving me showtime and so people assume that they're paying for both right like oh it's ten bucks a month but but if if you just got rid of show time then it should be five bucks or whatever right like it just doesn't work like that and the the way it works and you probably saw this like throughout you know history often times periodically there'd be like a little message on the screen sometimes and your local affiliate might have like a little banner that pops up and they'd be like we are about to be removed from dish network call this number to get us put back on there or whatever because they start to butt heads right so like these these networks and the providers whether it be dish network or you know any satellite provider any any cable provider charter you name it they they start to like jockey like what channels get put on the quote unquote basic lineup right the basic lineup is like anybody that has cable has these channels right so that's expensive real estate if you think about it you know what i mean it's like this is the old school version of paying for like google adwords right it's like well i want i want my stack ranking like you know everybody knows it when you google something the first three things that pop up are always ads like you know savvy internet folks like ourselves can see that right away we're like i'm not clicking on the ads you go to the fourth one every single time well it's just it's just interesting because the networks own so many other networks right and and you're starting to see that now and i hope people like kind of like like their eyes are opening to this like and i brought up a couple so discovery plus right the discovery networks of channels is animal planets hdtvs tlc it's uh bravo i think yeah i mean just huge channels so what they do is if they have an underperforming channel what they really wanted to do is is is kind of ride their their uh their their uh i guess like i was looking for a term there cash cow there we go like a pony or something like a pony eccentric pony that doesn't make it okay you're looking for cash cow yeah that's all yes i was missing the glass oh my god that is nice i have glasses on why am i so stupid all right so so so you're starting to see it right so there's a lot of under what i would call less popular networks that are on that um on that stack right but as a service when you like let's say you go out and pay for discovery plus you'll get the whole umbrella of those networks right good bad ugly so knowing that so everything's in discovery plus just think that they they being discovery channel has been trying to push all that whole ecosystem of channels into the basic basic lineup for a very long time right what's interesting is that you don't always know like like for the longest time i never knew that food network and all of that was part of discovery right they don't tell you that it's not often they don't have like the little discovery logo on the food network channel like so so when we actually signed up for discovery plus service because we don't pay for cable anymore we just get high-speed internet uh and it came with like all of these networks and all these television shows were like money yeah so i wonder why you can't and we probably don't have the answer maybe you do iron but we so when i was a cable guy this stuff didn't exist i mean maybe netflix was around but if you wanted to watch something you had to go on your cable box and you know there was on demand but yeah since it's shifted now i'm the same way we we cut our cord years ago and we just have the high-speed internet and now you have a cacophony of apps that you got to try to figure out what is where and there's actually if you haven't i think it's called real good or something the best app i've ever seen so you can just put in a show or a movie and it'll tell you what streaming service it's on it's fantastic if you're a cord cutter uh interesting yeah real good it's called and they're not a sponsor or anything but i guess what i'm getting at is i wonder why you can't customize because i probably wouldn't have cut the cord if i could just get what i wanted i mean what we're doing with all these streaming services if the cable providers would have just allowed that and there must be some kind of back end reason like why can't i get you know hbo nickelodeon all the networks and espn and just let me pay for that i don't know why that's not a thing well you have to get the family package well the family package doesn't have espn well you can get a sports ad on like is it it's just kind of a you know an upsell game thing they're doing kind of but but it's an upsell game from not the provider not dish network you know not direct tv not the cable company but yeah the the champion that right yeah like because to my earlier point right some of those like aj you said it straight up like i didn't know half these channels even existed you know and and they know that too and they know that that channel probably wouldn't exist without the others right and and they'll even do that where they like put the reruns on like the other channels but right it it's like it's such a different way to look at it because now what you're seeing is they're all breaking apart to these little almost like autonomous like you said a just a ridiculous amount of apps that you gotta find out where is what and here's the great the the best part about it is you're probably paying as much if not more like once you pay for all these apps your netflix disney plus your hp you are so we all cut the cord to save money to not and now we're paying just as much right and now it's a huge pain in the ass because now you got to figure out where your show is and like you know before i could just i mean you could talk into a you know a cable uh remote now and say hey game of thrones and it comes up good luck on your phone like you know and then you're fighting the chromecast it's it's i don't know i'm glad well then there's the word but what's the benefit at this point like 2021 you're right what's my benefit i'm not saving money i don't think no and and and you're actually you're not right because you just named the entire economics behind it and it's because each one of those quote-unquote apps or streaming services was was a had at least one channel on their the basic lineup right and they all paid for that spot you know and so since they all paid for that like they had to like pass that on to the subscriber and so it's like well no no if you get espn you have to get the disney channel because because the disney channel paid to be on the same section as espn right right because they know that espn not this is before they were even married together because you know disney owns espn now but before that like they would say hey no no we want espn because it has high subscribers like put us on the same lineup as that right because they know that they will have guaranteed subscribers based off of the cable or directv packages that you get sold so it's like it was like you know like you guys watched shark tank ever like i always think about this like you know yeah they they always talk about stuff like this kind of like not as detailed but you know you pay like in grocery stores you pay for like like shelf space and stuff right and the shelf space in the cooler is so much uh so much more expensive because there's only so much cooler right so think of that as like the basics expanded quote unquote and then you have like your fam like you said family pack has like these extra ones well then guess what people that know that in let's say dallas that your the the family pack includes this channel well then the other providers are going to go well i'm trying to target dallas as well and i want to be a part of that pack because i want to get my channel that's not doing so well to leech on to these other channels that are over performing or you know what i mean yeah so it's such a weird there's some back end evil genius marketing demographic like so like i don't know i don't know the relationship between disney and verizon as an example but i can tell you that i got a free year of disney plus because i'm a verizon unlimited wireless customer yep oh yeah now i got little kids pandemic disney plus rock on well the year was up now you know now i'm hooked because i can't live without it so it's like you know i think disney you know america's family company took a chapter out of the drug dealing book of like the first ones free bro like you know i mean they gave me they gave me a free they gave me a free year of disney plus and now i'm hooked and i have to pay for it but i wonder why you know like to your point they said all right let's get with verizon let's offer this for free we know that 80 percent of these schmoes are going to pay once the free things up and i think i don't want to speak out a term but i thought i read something today or yesterday that i think disney plus is projected to surpass netflix in you know i could see that internet content whatever that metric is yeah i mean they have like all the marvel stuff but they've been around like hours like a year and a half yeah they also have hundreds well i i wouldn't say hundreds but they have quite a few years of content yeah that people totally lost it after but i didn't think anybody would touch netflix just because they're the incumbent you know what i mean it's like saying you know juniper's going to overtake cisco like it's cisco i don't know i'm surprised that they're about to overtake netflix you know there's something to be said about first the market like netflix is there they're established they can hulu yeah yeah well i mean even though even though disney's not traditionally been a streaming company they were first to the market i mean how many movies does disney have yeah oh my gosh and then you know i think they have the affiliation with fox so you can get like all the fuck content you know i i catch up on my old simpsons episode they have all the sentences right and it was it was a rocky launch it was an awful service when it started they had big problems but they yeah so that that brings up a good point so you know we're network engineers we're you know in a capacity we have some architectural backgrounds as well right so design and you know efficiency and stuff like that you know when it comes to large service provider networks and i'm just thinking like all these people are at home right now all these people are watching netflix hulu and like i started this whole conversation off with there's like a bazillion of these apps i feel like 10 of them at least right like came out in the past like seven months or you know what i mean it's like a ridiculous number that's just saturating the network so much because it's video right so you guys i'm sure aj you you complain about this for but you've you've you've hit the proverbial you've hit the proverbial ceiling before haven't you haven't your friend yes did you get a nasty gram from i did from someone okay earlier this year yeah yeah what'd you do okay hold on before you say that before you say that before you say that i in the past the only nasty grams i ever got were from back in the day i was on um irc if you guys are familiar with that internet relay chat yeah it was like yeah so i would download just like everything i possibly could illegally like hey come yeah whatever come sue me feds come at me feds come at me bro um but yeah the only nasty grams i would get were from like hbo i had no idea how they knew i was stealing stuff from them you know what i mean i mean i wasn't like picking their pockets i was getting it from somebody else but you know what i mean it was like hbo like you think you were getting it from somebody else but i i think that at one point the content producers were hosting content and then when you see who they downloaded they're like oh they they can see the ip address information and stuff and then and then call well let's call let's call it out i mean your isp can see everything you're doing unless you're running a vpn right well yeah so that they'll tell you they're not looking but they can see all of it they can see the dns requests and i mean you know yeah to i mean the one thing the one thing to keep in mind is that is that if you have like if you think about the sub count on in a in an mso so mso means a major service operator i think i i don't know to this day i just say mso all the time but it's it means a cable company basically and so what it really means is like they have a they have their own network you know it's autonomous from like a telco right so it's completely different but but the way that the that the stuff is delivered is the secret sauce and if you were granularly looking at everybody's traffic like all three of us you know that's one thing but you know uh uh 20 million of us like at the same time like first of all yeah where the hell are you going to put all that data right you know what i mean so so yes to an extent you're right so so basically it's more like they can see like like uh amounts of traffic right um and and maybe like traffic type it's not like they can see if you're going to pirate bay right they they they can see yeah that's an ip address right totally and the dns is resolving through that isp you know modem and yeah you can see if you use the isps especially right for sure um is that how you got nasty grams i know we're going on an instagram route like were you not hiding no no no i like i don't know why that was honestly it was from hbo so it was like you know it wasn't in conjunction with like at times like charter communication it wasn't it wasn't in conjunction with them you know nothing ever happened yeah of course they're not going to come after me anyway it was just like a slap on the wrist to scare the hell out of me but right did you stop that happened to a buddy of mine oh i'll share that story in a minute oh please do because no of course i didn't stop what's wrong with you so so my buddy he he would download movies games and all sorts of stuff all types of stuff apparently uh one of the production companies uh tracked his ip address to a local isp in the burlington area and they subpoenaed the isp for the for the customer information and they're just like nope we're not going to give that to you we'll handle it from here oh uh and and so one day his his internet's out and he calls tech support to be like hey i need to get my internet work and they're like oh yeah that you need to come down to our office and we'll talk and then we'll turn your internet back on what'd they tell him what'd they say uh he he was like giving it a an official letter and an explanation like look you were caught stealing information stealing you know paid for materials we we blocked you we saved you this time but if you do that again we're gonna let them have at you and uh you'll be on your own uh so if you sign this little thing here that says you're not gonna do that again we'll let you have your internet back oh well but that that was a much smaller isp like it it was just surfing the burlington area it wasn't like you know a national isp or anything like that sure but you aj you've gotten the nasty gram but not the hbo nasty gram right i got the nasty gram that i was about to hit my data cap for the month of uh january oh that's a dirty ceiling data cap the the proverbial ceiling we got to talk about that that that makes me sad data cap yeah i i understand the business case behind data caps i just explained it to me please because my isp doesn't have data caps and i have a gig up and down and i love them and i would marry them andy well right but i've been with carriers that you're referring to and it was to me talking about the data cap thing i'm talking about the gig symmetrical well right but so to me the data cap thing always felt like a money grab right so like i can tell you that the isps the cable companies none specifically i won't hurt anybody's feelings but the cable companies saw the shift to internet to streaming they bulked up and spent a billion dollars on their internet structure infrastructure make it faster and all this stuff because they saw people were canceling their cable services knowing full well that the faster you make the internet the faster you consume the quicker you hit that cap and the more they can charge it for it like to me it's this evil genius back and how are we gonna it's the same reason they change your bill every six to twelve months because forty percent of people don't notice and you rip those people off until they know so yeah i could i could i could literally go on an absolute soapbox about the bill thing because do it it's about it's about it's about perceived value and that's the problem you know what i mean like to have a reliable internet connection like it should not be 50 bucks a month i hate he's saying that it should be it should be like because i i pay uh 100 bucks a month for a gig symmetrical google web pass right it's only available in certain buildings but it's a point-to-point wireless system and let me just tell you that it's hot garbage yeah and in no way shape or form am i going to plan on streaming anything over that you guys i'm not doing it because we're going to get google as a sponsor now no google you just said google's garbage i'm gonna take them off sooner or later so yeah so how do they get away with saying it's a gig if it's hot garbage well it is it is a gig but the thing is like no one talks about latency and jitter and packet loss like you might as well have satellite right yeah there's yeah there's no sla to the internet because like you can't you can't guarantee it i mean it's that's how just how it is right so i mean like but i know that going into it and i don't i don't care right because i have a cox cable connection at the same time right that that web pass is like a last resort for me i i actually feel extremely sorry no it literally is it literally and if anybody there has messed with meraki at um or on the job i know our friend dan who's not with us this evening because he's also digging his car out of the snow poor guy uh he he deploys a lot of meraki and i'm actually glad that the meraki pretty much only lets me fail over to that i mean i could quote unquote load balance it but you know it doesn't like dynamically pick what side i wanted to go on so it's just easier to say all right if it's hitting the fan go this direction type thing um and i i just i just wish that everybody could have that experience with like their lte connection because then you we wouldn't be so worried about like data caps all the time because you could you could tell your dev your internal device i'm literally i just came up with this today when because we were talking about it earlier like we all have cell phones right so we all have a cell phone plan so why isn't somebody making like a meraki type endpoint device for home users especially in today's networks where you know data you're aj's hitting the data cap right um i'm using a backup circuit that is trash right just so i don't like just destroy the network around me by using it too much but like why isn't there like something i could just slip a card in i know ubiquity makes like a in the dream machine you can have like the little extender thing it's kind of like a cradle point or whatever but like i just think from like an isp perspective they have it for business class stuff but not for home users and i'm just wondering like because the data cap is not a new thing the data cap comes from the wireless industry right like that's a that's a wireless thing because and it wasn't like a cap they were like yo the second you go over this you're gonna get charged out the wazoo we've all had that bill we're thriving right so yes i think one one for me one key difference between the wireless industry and the cable industry the cable internet industry is that when wireless started they started with data caps but for the longest time i have been able to use my internet without any sort of data cap and then they've introduced data caps and i understand that right now there happens to be a strain on the internet because everybody's working and learning and playing from home but it's also still a pandemic and so to introduce those at this particular time well they were all heroes in the beginning right we're gonna wave the data cap because we're good citizens i guess they've i guess that's gone away huh well it's time to start charging people again for the next four or six months or something like that i think at least in the northeast states are covered by uh by not paying the data cap fees uh at least also though if you think about this this is this is an interesting side to this because it's almost like devil's advocate if you think about like your friend as an example aj who is just crushing the network so let's let's be clear about how the cable plan works real quick so each one of the quote unquote nodes right which is really just a media converter changes the fiber optic cable to the coax that goes into your house that's all it does and uh that being said there's about 500 homes that are fed by each one of these notes okay or each one of the sides of these notes so there's 500 people that are sharing the same frequency as you all right cable modems work with two different things frequency division multiplexing and time division multiplexing the important thing here is time division multiplexing because in frequency division multiplexing that's completely irrelevant if they're all using the same frequency right so they're all using the same frequency and frequency for those of you who are not familiar is literally a tv channel okay so all of these cable modems share the same tv channel when they're talking to your modem and when they're talking back that's why this is an issue so all 500 of those people if they try to talk at the same time what the endpoint device does is it tells all the modems hey you're allowed to talk now you're allowed to talk now you're allowed to talk now it's it's that's the time division right so they each have their own time slot in wichita and we're talking nanoseconds here right so it's really fast the problem then incurs when your buddy who got that letter is hogging all of the bandwidth and none of y'all can watch netflix do you know what i mean uh so is the problem over subscription because the telco's trying to squeeze every penny no no no no because that's what i always figured they're over you know it's shared bandwidth because they're over subscribing and blah blah blah blah blah like they they they won't over subscribe uh uh speeds to people that that the node wouldn't be able to handle at full capacity so can i push back on that theory for a second so couldn't they just police that customer's verf like they could cross him or you know like they could limit him in the network they don't need to data cap all their customers because people are turning like i feel like data caps are a money grab that it's not because time division multiplexing it's just another way of looking at it i'm not saying you're you're wrong or i'm wrong but no no i'm just trying to say like this is how it works but it's a money grab isn't it i mean technically you and i work for the texas tacos they could yeah they could open the pipes and reinvest in the infrastructure to to open it up right like and they and they constantly are right so like like you know fiber deep and there's there's so many things there's so many initiatives now like so another thing is docsis right i'm sure everybody's heard that at some point in their life the only problem with docsis which you've clearly seen is asymmetrical speeds because because of where the cable plants have evolved from all of those upload frequencies sit in a very low frequency range that is like highly susceptible to ingress ingress is is interference right so it's just it's just a really bad spot like think of think of your wi-fi because look the cable plant is just wi-fi in a cable it's the exact same principles right so like if things are interfering with your wi-fi signal just like if you if you just nicked the outside of the cable and you let over-the-air stuff interfere with that cable and then that cable is also going to leak out frequencies as well basically turns into an antenna nobody is having a good time but the data cap is related to down load not upload correct correct which again gets me back to the money grab like there's no reason to hit aj with the data cap because his buddy is here's the money to learning right oh yeah i i see what you're saying it's just another way of looking at it and maybe i'm just cynical but i don't know i don't think that aj should have to pay additionally for a dating what i would prefer and you see this everywhere i would prefer you charge me more and don't cap me like if you need to charge me 10 or 20 more bucks a month and you're not bothering me with the data cap cool you got your money that's what they've offered me now at this point that's what i would buy that's why i could buy an extra 30 bucks a month and not have to worry about a data cap oh well there you go you know but what but it's principle introduce the data cap period when i never when i didn't have a data cap before now i have to pay 30 bucks for a service i had and what was their justification do you remember when they came in with the data cap was there some pretty little letter that you know did they tell you oh our poor little network can't handle all these terrible streamers like i i can't really say anything i think it's right i think it's a money grab but i think it's fine yeah it's just i don't know you're about to hit our new introduced data caps because you use a lot of data but they know what you think is a lot like everything is a video conference like they are data companies they want you to consume as much data as possible it's the attention economy stay on our internet use it all like so i don't let me ask you you can't say that you can't have it as a business model and then penalize your customers for using said service that they've been telling you is so wonderful and so great like i don't know that's i'm that makes no that makes sense uh let me let me no let me let me present to you a dystopian future sorry i got fired up i'm i'm good that was that doesn't exist with data cap so obviously uh how familiar are we all here with the net neutrality because we touched on it briefly right yeah right you know it's just it's like how much of the data can you see it's not necessarily the issue isn't it paying for like faster lanes kind of thing or something exactly it's it's what you just described like the q you said can't you just qos the guy and yeah you can right that that's the problem so i've seen this before this is ridiculous i i don't i don't remember which i wish i had remembered which country i actually wish i would have thought of this and maybe when you guys were talking i'll google it um just because i want to find it because it's very interesting i found a couple of countries and i don't remember exactly where they were i want to say like somewhere in the middle east or like eastern european area um and they actually had services and i believe this was through like a vodafone type of like major operator over there and the packages you bought were so wild like there was like a social media package and what that meant was this is how granular this is it had facebook instagram twitter you know tick tock whatever is like the thing and that was a package you could buy so that that was like what you were able to access it was like aol have you seen that before no no okay that's interesting it sounds frightening as hell doesn't it a little bit yeah i mean it does to me but when i think about it i'm like uh yeah that's kind of what like businesses do like in an mpls world you know except except they're saying as a business i want to pay extra for qos so that my traffic goes here and they this goes you know if it's in contention you know i win type of thing but that takes it to a whole other level so like you know it's weird because we started out like like the cord cutting and then you know you package together like all these channels and it's like oh i could just get those channels and then it's like okay well get rid of my data caps and let me just pay for the services that i want to use i want to use netflix hulu well then you're right back in that situation again right boom cable company wins again you're going to cancel you're going to cancel your cable and go to internet and stream everything we'll get you here come together but here's the interesting thing uh i wasn't in a contract before i was just paying for my my internet and if i sign up for a contract i can save 30 bucks a month and then i can pay the 30 bucks a month to get the unlimited internet and be right back to what i was paying before so it's like i'm getting you know stuff for free which isn't terrible i mean i'm i'm not a contract guy but if you can get rid of your cap and do it by signing a contract in this case i don't mind paying the contract because we i i need internet i will always have internet and unfortunately where i live i have two options one is cable internet uh and the other is seven meg down dsl and that's it and they and they know like so you got me thinking earlier too about like the data caps like just leave me alone charge me more and like so yeah aaron you'll know this a triple play customer statistically will stay with you forever yeah it's it's more sticky right the more private very yeah yeah of course so why in god's green earth would you mess with the price every six to twelve months make them think about the price make them start shopping around like in my mind it would make so much more sense just to come up with a price you're happy with mr telco charge the customer let the customer pay it now they're a triple play now they'll be with you forever and they will never again think about the price and start shopping around because every six to 12 months they're putting the price in the customer's head by boosting their bills like to me it just there's some kind of broken logic with i think the same thing about uh uh satellite radio yeah same thing it's the same culture of call every six to 12 months for a retention offer like just leave me alone charge me a fair price and i will be with you forever i i even had that conversation because i i signed up for a year for five bucks a month 60 bucks for satellite radio i was like great i i don't listen to a ton of it i listen to like two or three channels max and that's it and i just want to pay five bucks a month and let me listen to the satellite radio and then the year comes up and they want to charge me 200 for a year and i'm like no no i don't want to do that like why can't why can't you just continue to pay like or charge me that that five bucks a month price well i can't do that first of all it's no secret that all you gotta do is call in a bitch about it right i mean like everybody knows no no i called in and i complained about it and and they would not give me that price i i can't i had to cancel for four months and i just got the letter in the mail the other day so check this out i'm i'm 100 with you and and the reason why i am so passionate about this in particular subject is yes i worked at cable companies i get it but more importantly when i was at charter i i hope they don't come back soon charter doesn't exist anymore so maybe they can't um but we we did do that we went to that exact same thing you said and i just remember that the conversations we were having around this like whole plan like how to re like how do you reintroduce pricing to the world from a cable company because what happens is the evil here is actually the promo right so the bait is the evil because what the bait does the evil the evil in the bait is that it's giving a perceived value to that service right so example if i sell you a hundred meg connection for 29.99 and then in six months i jack it up to 69.99 you're like what the hell right but i'm like well wait a minute bro i you had a six month coupon like you should be looking at it like you just saved a ton of money right because this service costs me even to maintain more than 29.99 a month you know what i mean so started in the middle let's pick a median and start from there and leave it alone right like instead of 30 or 60 like charge me 45 call it a day we're all happy and don't jack me in six months in a per in my perfect world that would be you know i'm with you and we and we did that and actually uh i'll and i'll tell you straight up that so i have cox right now i am in a guaranteed pricing for two years right because i pay i don't know what it is it's like 180 or something but i have like a dvr i have a single one dvr so i have like one cable outlet and i have the internet and i have i don't even remember what channels i have right i just have basically everything that will like supplement me live tv wise you sign a contract to get the fixed price is that how you got it absolutely absolutely well no no i don't know i don't think i did i just said hey this is at the time chartered charter would would say hey price guarantee for two years or price guarantee for one year and it wouldn't go up after the price guarantee it just meant that you weren't locked into the guarantee yeah yeah you know what i mean and and i preferred that but the problem was like because it's so much easier to explain right when you're like hey if you want a triple play guess what it's 189. right but two years from now it's 189 the only the only real issue is is that like we were talking about earlier and i hope this just all comes full circle for everyone that the dollars most of the time especially for cable are being just passed through from the channels and so if you say hey i'm going to guarantee that you're going to pay 189 for the next two years and espn decides that they're going to extort the hell out of the network which i've seen it before right uh cbs goes out and buys the super bowl because they all bid on sports events every year i don't know if you guys knew that but like cbs nbc they all it's always different every year fox whatever and then magically that that network will be up for renewal in a local market and then that's when you get those little stock tickers on the bottom that's like please call directv so that they don't remove this channel because you know what they did let's say cbs had the uh at the super bowl they they were like uh we're up for we're off for a renewal by the way we got the super bowl so you guys are really going to have to buck up to keep to keep us on the network providers are like what no you can't just steal the super bowl away from people you know what i mean this happened once like i i kid you not this hap this exact scenario i'm describing happened like three days before the super bowl in st louis and i was like this is bananas like what are you doing to these people right so it's like is the only way i'm gonna be able to get this through directv yeah because it's not and it's not it was not charter that's the problem though charter was like stuck in the middle like and people hate them because of it but it was it was all cbs the local cbs affiliate that was doing it and that's crap um but you were saying something earlier um about uh the guaranteed pricing that that i think like to me i yeah you calling in now is is one of those things where like yeah maybe it is like getting a little old they're like pushing back maybe because they know that everybody knows that now and they're like ah nice try buddy but i think i i think that like there's just a lot less leeway now and believe it or not stuff is just ridiculously cheap here's what's going to happen and just so everybody can rest easy and this is going to be in the very very near future because you know i i watch like docsis and i and i know i know the capabilities of docsis we're just waiting for you know network upgrades from our our local providers whether it be t2 or whoever to be able to facilitate this is in the very new future we're going to have 10 gig by 10 gig symmetrical speeds on cable connections over docsis all right yes sir absolutely really what's the maximum upload you can get now on docsis see that's the thing that we don't we never talk about this right because because of where the docsis channel sits in the spectrum is like one hundred percent of the issue that i gotta move it higher yeah because because docs is if you look if you go look at the specs like you just go check wikipedia they own the spectrum why don't they just move it i guess it's not that easy all those diplex filters that keep forward and reverse traffic from from touching yeah you got to go change all that out man and so and plus like what are they going to have to do that to where you're saying the 10 10 yeah okay yeah yeah so so if you look at docs's specifications it'll tell you even docs 3.1 i mean it does nutsy cuckoo speeds that we're not seeing right now you know what i mean and it's like well heck i see it on the thing i go to best buy i buy myself a docsis 3.1 modem and now i should be able to get you know 10 gig but they're only selling me a gig but i think we now know why so shouldn't the world be focused on fiber to every home instead of playing with docs is it too expensive to run fiber everywhere is that the problem yes yeah yes it is and it isn't right so what's interesting to me is that is that when you look at like metal and the price of metal and copper you guys remember like in was it like 2004 or five when everybody was stealing copper like the price of copper was through the road what was that what was up with that yeah um but but think about that it would have cost more to build coax per foot than fiber at that time that's crazy because because of the the cost of metal like that's weird and so it wasn't necessarily just that um it was a combination of things like so you have to have good endpoint devices right you do need to some have some sort of like no like because like we talk about like think you're in a multicast situation right so think about multicast like you need like the rendezvous point you know and where is that like that that probably has to be closer to the subscriber than it does the actual network itself additionally all the stuff that we've been talking about previously is is really the main culprit all these quote unquote cdns if you use a cdn that's traditional like netflix og netflix like in 2007 2008 you were going all the way through your isps network out and out to netflix and then coming all the way back and everybody was doing that until the point where netflix was like yo we should probably talk about this because a bulk of our stuff is being sent to you guys and you know it's unnecessarily saturating the network so introduce these cdns these content delivery networks and moving them closer to the subscriber so you're not saturating the network however you're always going to be saturating a portion of the network again i'll all i'll uh reference uh like multicast so like that rendezvous point you're gonna saturate everything until that rendezvous point right because but hopefully it's like internal traffic and not going across the backbone like that's the biggest issue right the backbone traffic because like hey like let's save that for for uh actual internet traffic and and what i think is maybe that you know what we've maybe even learned just in the past like hours so is that maybe some extent to net neutrality would be a good thing or a lack of net neutrality and hear me out here so it's like hey are you a streamer or are you not right if you are you need to pay 10 bucks more a month but that's because we're sending all your traffic directly to content delivery networks and it's right on our edge and it's right here and that's and you're guaranteed to get that right and then everything else is just business as usual right so to just be able to delineate the two and then they could do all types of crazy stuff by you know you're like andy you're talking about like qos and like being able to triage that to certain customers or whatever but but at this point isn't everybody streaming like isn't it a faulty argument to say if you're streaming and i i don't know i have a problem with charging people premiums for i uh i don't know well it makes me so well do maybe maybe you're looking at it backwards maybe it's you're not charging a premium for something but maybe you you're charging less of for something else that's not as important like in in my example i'm not charging necessarily a premium to be on netflix i'm just going to charge you less for doing regular internet browsing when i when i look at the revenue of telcos and netflix i mean these people are pulling in tens of billions of dollars every year in revenue to pass on a cost to a customer be it a data cap be it a promo be it you got to pay more because cdn now that's all i'm not making 60 billion dollars a year revenue in andypandy.com but all these companies that was a shameless plug i don't make a dime on it like i'm just saying that me the guy they want to charge premiums for and all these things we're talking about you know i don't have revenue i'm paying my bills and saving for kids college and stuff so all the you know we're feeling i don't want to frame this as feel bad for these companies who need to charge us more because i don't think so pipes are too small or quas or whatever like they're making so much money reinvest in your infrastructure fat in the pipes and leave the customers alone making they're making money no no hold on i feel like craig farrow all right easy there old man easy there look let's differentiate revenue and bro and profit this guy profit profits a whole other story because netflix pays a ridiculous amount of money to have the stuff that they have too you know so there's there's a give and take there like yes businesses are trying to make money don't get me wrong i get that i get that like just think about this though you are not being no one is being screwed right now by an isp if you feel like you're being screwed it's because you accidentally had a coupon when you started out that's that's an accident that the coupon was by design to lure you in it was a big deal thank you but i but like i said that the guaranteed pricing was tried right and no one liked it because they're like that's too expensive why would i pay that much for internet yeah right because because the the damage had already been done right whole thing yeah yeah if you if somebody at one point ever paid 30 dollars for an internet guess how much it cost my neighbor paid yeah yeah right right yeah it's like the exact opposite of the wireless industry because the wireless industry started out with well for 50 bucks a month we'll give you a hundred minutes and if you want nights and weekends that's going to cost you extra and if you want text messaging well let me get my menu out you know and now it's like 50 bucks a month unlimited everything and and now the cable industry is trying to go the opposite direction like if you want social media then you got to pay this price if you want unlimited then you got to add this price and then it so it's they're going this way you know no i'm not saying i'm not saying that they're doing that i'm saying that that's like that's the display universe of saving net neutrality i actually like googled it uh not too long ago and if if and and i invite anyone to do this if you just type net neutrality into google and and just do the google image search you'll get that that was a very big topic of discussion under the obama administration absolutely was fcc right all this stuff um but you'll see you'll see like all these examples right like of of different packages like i'm just looking at one right now it's it's it's you know it's over exaggerated but like this is the point so like there's like a playground package for five bucks and that gets you access to like uh ea world warcraft steam stuff like that and then you have like a five dollar package that's for i don't know if it's just like normal like web browsing it's like wikipedia google wordpress flickr youtube stuff like that so i don't know but if if something like that got turned on our you know to your point earlier right like can the isps see our traffic going through sure they can of course they can but do they do they have the the systems to facilitate really uh enforcing manipulating right right right right yeah because instagrams right so they can and it'd be a lot more overhead to try to support absolutely and that's gonna cost more money right yeah no you're totally right because actually what you just described is like is one of those pillars i always say like pillar of sd-wan right which is insights and control so once you have insight then you can begin to control it right and until you have insight then you can't control the issue with that never being a thing before like application level manipulation is because holy god the processing power that you need to do that real time right when guys like me are trying to play call of duty out here and i mean my ping to be less than 36 milliseconds i can't shoot somebody in the head when my ping is like 55. i don't know if you guys have you guys seen that commercial uh lately where it's it's a cgi and it's uh samuel l jackson and he's like he's like on top of something it's like it's like he's like a video game character and he's like and he's like why would you be using that all isp for for video games and he's trying to get you to switch to 5g which is crazy he's like you should he's like lag free network like first of all in what world does does someone use their first choice to video game not only a wireless connection but a 5g wireless connection to t-mobile like well like what i wouldn't even play candy crush on that dude i would rather connect to you know what i mean i'd rather connect it like it it was one of those things because he said he said why play with lag but the thing is lag is lag is a like a kind of just like a catch-all term it doesn't really mean anything it's like a combination of things right it's like it's like because don't you dare say latency samuel jackson because we're going to call bs on you right away sir packet loss you know we're talking about court cutting we've been talking about cord cutting this whole time but i think at the end of the day we can all agree that we need at least some cords especially going into our house right and if you can get a fiber cord yeah don't get a don't get a point-to-point uh wireless one if you want fiber to your home don't move to vermont don't move fiber i saw i'm just gonna leave on this note but i saw this billboard once i was driving through the central valley of california and i thought it was the funniest thing uh and i was in market at comcast at the time and and all it said was fiber and chickens that's all it said i have no idea what they were trying to sell i i don't know what it was for i don't know who put it up it just said fiber and chickens feel like a cryptic like a billboard or something it was a billboard and and i like and this isn't a bad thing but i think of that billboard every time aj talks about his internet connection so anyway uh any last words you want to leave the the groups with are the are our friendly listeners with uh thanks for participating in survey everybody that did we appreciate it yes yeah and it's still ongoing we're going to leave it up for a little while i want to collect some more data we've gotten some really great responses uh we're we're learning so much about our audience some of it we're like yeah that's what we figured but it you know it kind of it's it's confirming that for us and then at the bottom of the survey there was a write-in section you know if you have any ideas you want to pitch to us let us know how we're doing uh some some just really great feedback from from the community on uh you know the podcast and how we're doing so we we really appreciate that so thank you so much for the comments thank you so much for taking the time to fill out the survey it really helps it does yeah we i mean basically at the end of the day you know we we make this for you so we want you to be happy and also be a part of it in the way as much as you can so just know that all those write-in comments that you're leaving like we're reading those and we're collecting them so that we can take your advice you know if there's something you want to hear about please tell us and you know and that's not just for the survey we would love it if you put it there but you know that's not the only subject suggestion box i mean you could tweet it you know you can i don't know what the kids say today slide into our dms um i would love it if somebody slid into my dms i do all the time i do it to everybody if you put a story up i'm like i'm like that's dope i always put a reaction to it i'm like yeah what's up that's cool i just like reacting to stuff i don't know i think it's cool i'm just old i guess maybe i'm just out of touch but maybe i shouldn't be doing i don't know i'm clueless any final words for the for no i i enjoyed the discussion i i would just close with you know we're discussing first world problems right like you know totally you know i i i have all these streaming services or my internet super fast then they're making me pay extra for super internet and you know i i just don't want it lost that you know there's people who can't afford the internet let's say and you know or so i don't want to make it sound like these are like real problems you know what i mean but good point you know you know in a perfect world the democratization of information i think you know everybody should have the internet it should be affordable for everybody and i i i cringe at the thought of killing net neutrality because if you're going to charge the cheap tier to get on facebook then you know lower income folks are going to be on facebook but they won't be able to get the new york times as an example totally that's a great point that's what kind of bothers me about all of it but no it's it's a great discussion and you know it's in a weird spot where it's like it's not quite a utility yet like you just can't charge for for the consumption because it's not available to everybody right and you know what i'll say this too we're i think we're going to have a whole episode on this freaking starlink thing because we all know elon musk is taking over the world right now but i just think it's worth i think it's worth talking about and i judging by today i think we have plenty to talk about when it comes to this guy uh i'm curious about starlink but i'm not five hundred dollars up front and twelve hundred dollars a year curious is that how much they want yeah wow yeah to be a guinea pig like get get the the dish and all that stuff and then uh it's a hundred bucks a month for the service so the another thing to point out because because you you made a good point about you know not everybody having access to the internet i will point out because you especially andy love to beat up on the cable companies in particular but uh you can you could speak from from experience here those isps in general do a very good job at serving communities they they do a very good job at donating and like not just equipment like i'm talking computers and chromebooks and stuff like that and they have lower but also they have you know the community low-income very affordable exactly exactly exactly i mean it's not like you know a gig right but but you're right definitely internet yeah you're you're on you're on the internet you're getting it information it's nothing to complain about and i will say from like when i worked at charter every government building that we had had cable that was pro bono because and i'm talking like you know so you're waiting in in the courtroom or a courthouse or whatever and there's a tv in the corner that was free to them because you know that was like the government was providing a service and they felt like that was how they could help i'll give you another example uh if you're familiar with how the jail system works you know they have pods in the pod there's usually a tv in the middle of the pod it's usually free right like they don't charge the jail for that right because our tax dollars are paying for those things and paying for those government buildings to be open and i know in particular i'd be pissed if i saw them paying for satellite tv or cable or something right so they've been doing a lot of stuff for a lot of times so i don't want to make it sound like you know that's super evil or anything but you know it is a business at the end of the day but i think we would be we would be doing a disservice we did not point out all the awesome stuff that they do also for the community because it's huge and it's just too much to talk about quite honestly but um yeah fill out the survey gosh darn it and if we haven't made that point already slide into our dms baby hey we're over here like actually physically sliding because we don't know what that means throwing my readers in the slide right into your dm where do i slide into the dm you got to put your cane down so you can slide walker you can't slide with a lot a walker on dude come on that's why i got my tennis balls yeah exactly i got my tennis balls pretty good honey get my tennis balls you guys are too much all right everybody out there tv land thanks for joining us this time see ya 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 net edge that's art of n-e-t-e-n-g you can also find us on the web at art of network engineering dot 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