The Art of Network Engineering
Join co-hosts A.J., Andy, Dan, Kevin, and our guests as we explore the world of Network Engineering! In each episode, we explore new topics, talk about technology, and interview people in our industry. We peak behind the curtain and get insights into what it's like being a network engineer - and spoiler alert - it's different for everyone! For more information check out our website https://artofnetworkengineering.com | Be sure to follow us on Twitter and Instagram as well @artofneteng | Co-Hosts Twitter Handles: A.J. @noblinkyblinky | Andy @andylapteff | Dan @HowdyPacket | Kevin @adjacentnode
The Art of Network Engineering
Cloud Transition and Networking Future Trends, with Craig Johnson
Curious about transitioning from traditional network engineering to cloud technologies? Craig Johnson's career trajectory is a masterclass in adapting to industry changes. We walk through his journey from handling ISDN and early internet complexities to mastering cloud-native tools like Terraform and CloudFormation. Craig highlights the importance of community involvement and practical learning for engineers hesitant to embrace the cloud. We also delve into how feedback loops between customer-facing roles and product developers can drive significant innovations and improvements in technology.
What does the future hold for network engineering? Listen as we explore the impact of AI on the field, the rise of SDN and SD-WAN, and the incorporation of AI into certifications. Craig provides his take on the shift to open environments in 5G networks and the evolving role of LTE and 5G in modern networking. Our discussion also touches on content creation within networking communities and the rewarding journey of pursuing advanced certifications. Whether you're a seasoned professional or new to the field, this episode offers invaluable insights and inspiration for your career.
Find everything AONE right here: https://linktr.ee/artofneteng
This is the Art of Network Engineering podcast. In this podcast, we'll explore tools, technologies and talented people. We aim to bring you information that will 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 at NoBlinkyBlinky and I am very excited to be joined by Tim Bertino. He is at Tim Bertino. Tim, it's been a hot minute man. How are you doing?
Speaker 2:Well, I'm better now. Like you said, we haven't recorded in a while, and a couple weeks ago I had to struggle through all the FOMO of missing everything from Cisco Live, seeing everybody have a good time. I got to ask you, aj, you went this year as a content creator, like legit as a content creator, yeah, and not on behalf of any other company, but a one. How different of an experience was that this time around.
Speaker 1:It was very different. It was different for a number of reasons. One, I didn't have to attend sessions. But I tell you what I wanted to. I couldn't because I had the Explorer pass. I could attend some sessions within the world of solutions, which I did, but it was really different because I wasn't there to. I wasn't there to take the classes. I still got to engage with the community, which I've done in the past, but that community engagement looked a lot different.
Speaker 1:Right, the content that I've been creating or that we've been creating for the last four years has been more visual. There's been a much larger audience than what I've had on just my blog in the past. And while Andy and I and the others were walking around World of Solutions, we literally had people stopping us that were like hey, aren't you the Art of Network Engineering? Guys? I got to tell you this one story. There's this one guy I want to say his name was Anthony. He stopped us with so much energy, it was just infectious. And then he had this cup like a tumbler or whatever, and he was having a whole bunch of people sign and autograph this tumbler for him oh cool.
Speaker 1:Very cool it was just such a really cool experience and he was just really excited to meet us and talk about how our content has positively affected them. And it was those kinds of interactions that really got to, you know, recharge the content creator battery and kind of you know reminded me like why we're here, why we're doing this thing Right. So then it was really good to see some old faces. We got to see Lexi and a few other folks. We got to meet Alexis. We got to meet Kevin. Kevin was there and he's the newest addition to the team, so it was really fun to meet him in person. Talk about authentic. He is exactly the person you see here on the show as he is in person.
Speaker 1:He's just really fun to hang out with. So overall great experience. I did forget what a week at Cisco Live will do to you. I'm just now fully recovered from that experience, but I look forward to hopefully doing it again next year.
Speaker 2:That's awesome. And I saw you had your own mini Cisco Live in Omaha, yeah yeah, we did we so the week after and we'll call out our guest here in a second. But our guest recorded some uh short form with you guys at cisco live and was gracious enough to attend our local one here in nebraska not even a week later. So I'm starting to wonder if our guest uh a permanent address or not.
Speaker 3:It's true.
Speaker 4:It's been a summer, so it's agreed.
Speaker 1:He's starting to wonder that too. It sounds like. So, tim, cisco Live Omaha or Cisco Live Las Vegas. How does it compare?
Speaker 2:Well, it's a little bit different. Well, I should say so. The difference that I can speak to is that the Cisco Live that's in Vegas or San Diego or Orlando, I don't have to help make that one.
Speaker 4:That's really the key yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, that's really sad. And those Well, that's really sad. And those kinds of Cisco lives are really cool. I did one of those in Burlington Vermont here back in like 2018. And so I worked with my Cisco account manager at the time I was on the customer side and we put together a local conference, just like that, and it's a great time.
Speaker 1:You know, the Burlington Vermont area does not see a lot of events like that, and it's it's a great time. You know, the Burlington Vermont area does not see a lot of events like that, and so you know, usually if we want to attend something where we're going to, like the Cisco live or the Cisco connect event in Massachusetts, which is really cool because it's at Gillette stadium, or you know, sometimes they have events, you know, in Albany and either one of those is like a three-hour drive for us. So when we do events like that in Burlington, we usually get tons of people and it's really fun. So I think, without further ado, let's jump into it. Our guest this evening is Craig Johnson. He is a technical solutions architect at Forward Networks and he's super active in the community. I'm sure you've seen his face at an event recently, craig. Thank you so much for taking the time.
Speaker 4:No, thank you very much. So yeah, as mentioned, I'm a technical solution architect, I live in Dallas, so yeah, happy to be here.
Speaker 1:Fantastic. What is a technical solutions architect? Give us a day in the life of kind of thing.
Speaker 4:So don't look too down on it being sales, but what we are is we're on the pre-sale side, but it's kind of what I consider is much more of an empathy style position, like people that are successful in this type of position.
Speaker 4:I worked many years in operations myself for a service provider. I spent many years in post-sales doing customer support at Cisco myself, and it's being able to really empathize with people, to be able to understand what the pain they're going through. So I work with network operators, I work with cloud operators, I work with security professionals to really understand the pain that they're going through. And for my current day job, exactly how what we do can help, you know, evangelize new solutions and, even if we can't help, at least being able to understand what they're going through and seeing how we can, you know, help that, whether it is automation, whether it is just being a practitioner, whether it is more on the architecture side. So it's a pretty you know day job, definitely a sales, but it encompasses, you know, a little bit of product marketing, a little bit of, of course, community evangelism and, yeah, that's pretty much the size of it Awesome and Forward Networks.
Speaker 1:I am a little bit familiar with Forward, but one of their primary products is the Digital Twin. Can you just give us a summary of what is a Digital Twin?
Speaker 4:Yeah, so high level. The idea behind a digital twin is that it takes what you know about your network and creates a mathematical copy and software, so to kind of take it to something what people know. If you think about we use digital twins all the time you know when you pop open your phone and you open up Google Maps on there, that's a digital twin about the world from a historical perspective, all the streets and everything and overlays kind of more up-to-date information, traffic and weather and things like that to it. So if you think about what's in a network, take every device, whether it is Cisco, juniper, arista, palo switches, firewalls, routers, load balancers they all do something pretty similar. You have a packet come into a device. It will change some headers, do a Mac rewrite or something, and then it goes out of a device. Now there's a lot more of that because it's which output port does it pick? I'm going to add VXLAN and PLS, all those kind of fun things that keep us employed. But if you think about everything that they're doing, every device does that. So it's creating a model of all of those things so that I have an offline copy of what my network looks like and then with that I can start to do some analysis. I can start to look at all of the devices I have. I can start to look at the path between any point to any point. So it's not necessarily a new concept.
Speaker 4:When you open up EVENG or CML and start to create your own lab, you're creating a digital twin of something you know you're creating a lab. Maybe it's your CCI, your CCD lab, maybe you're creating something it's a digital twin of some real network. You know, when I started it was buying a rack of Cisco 2500. Now you can do it all virtually, which is much nicer, a little bit cheaper, a little bit cheaper and a little less noisy. Yes, but it's creating that sort of model and being able to do it at scale. It's being able to not do six or ten but to do 1,000 or 10,000 devices to model that sort of view of the network. It's a long-winded answer, but that's really the idea of a digital twin. So it's a space a couple of vendors in and of course there's some open source products in it. But we see it as a very popular space that a lot of people are moving towards a new category that they have.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean absolutely. I think there's tremendous value in being able to digitally duplicate your network. And then you know you can do all sorts of tests, right? Imagine being able to like faithfully reproduce your network and test a maintenance window before going into the maintenance window, right? And then then you know like, oh hey, it turns out I screwed something up in my script that would have completely, you know, taken down the network, but I learned that before actually going into the maintenance window because of the digital twin.
Speaker 2:So see, aj, I think I think that's a perfect example, because I would do that when I was a practitioner and I, but it would be in a virtualized environment where I would try to get as close as I could to my true environment, but I was never able to get 100% of the way there. So I could get somewhat comfortable, but never that 100%. I know this is what my environment's like. So I agree with you, that's to be able to have that digital twin, that copy of your network, makes a ton of sense, to be able to test those kinds of things and have that assurance.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean it. It might sound shocking, but practicing a cutover on a 2921 is a lot different than actually executing it on like an asr. So this is true yes, and there's, like you know, nuance syntax differences.
Speaker 4:Your, if your script's ready for you know, ios, it's not ready for ios xe or xr well, and even taking beyond that a little bit like even if you know what your change is doing and it's modifying some routes or maybe changing a route map you don't always know If you have, let's say, even a modest size network, 30 or 40,000 routes in your environment, you don't know every application that affects.
Speaker 4:You don't so I mean, I remember my days in change windows where you had 100 people on the phone my app is good, my app is good, my app is good. And they don't do that for very long because they're not going to be on the phone every week doing that. So you really do need some way to holistically look at that and use that to verify. Okay, before and after I made my change, does the network look like what I expect it to? And even beyond that a little bit? Like I mentioned, I worked for Cisco for many years.
Speaker 4:I'm pretty good at iOS and XOS, but there's a lot of different OSs out there and while the industry has tried to kind of standardize things, you know there was open config and a few things like that. Really, you know I can. You know I'm not very. I'm not all that great on Palo Altos, I'm only okay on some different OSs and being able to. But when you, you know every vendor has their own CLI, which is great. But being able to really normalize that and view it as it was without being an expert on any particular vendor, I think is really key to a lot of these things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely, craig. If you don't mind, I would like to kind of step through your career in a Cliff Don'ts fashion fashion, just kind of set the stage for our conversation, to understand your background. Uh, how'd you get started? And let's kind of go from there. What drew you to networking?
Speaker 4:so do you remember dial up internet I?
Speaker 2:do I do? I just got the. I just got the sound going through my head.
Speaker 4:Yeah, so one of my early jobs out of high school and during college was working for a company $99 a year unlimited 56K well, it was 28K at the time but they later upgraded to 56K internet access. So way better than AOL. Don't use AOL, this is direct internet access. Yeah, absolutely, we give you an email address and the whole thing. So that was one of my early jobs, doing that kind of technical support and let me tell you doing, you know, troubleshooting people's Windows 3.1 and Windows 95 PCs, their dial-up support. It really, you know, definitely bloody knuckles for that one. So that was doing that. And so you get introduced to what IP is and kind of how that can. But beyond that you talk to the people inside that are working in the NOC and that was way higher than us. I'm just help desk for customers. There's the NOC over there and above them there was network engineering that actually configure these giant Cisco 7500 routers and things like that. So you start getting into that more. And then I got promoted into not just dial-up, to doing ISDN support, which, if any of your audience remembers that, they've got gray hairs as well. So that's where I kind of got started is.
Speaker 4:They had that and I was one of the early, early people that when Cisco first introduced the CCNA and this was like in 1999, you know I they they had a program where you could get an old Cisco, you know, like a Cisco 800 router, of where the ISDN routers, and you could practice on it and the CCNA was just a single test. It was the. They had the CCNA and the CCI and that was it. No, nothing in between at the time. So I started going through that. It's like you know, this stuff really isn't as difficult and at the time I was 19 or 20, I'm not a very good coder and I'm like, okay, this is, I'm not going in the programming path, but this is an area that I really like going into. So, going along that path and working for a local VAR for a while, kind of getting my CCNA.
Speaker 4:And then, at the ripe old age of 21, I decided to get my first CCIE and that was back when it was a two-day exam. I mean, troubleshooting is always first and my greatest love in networking. So that was absolutely the most fun part I've ever had in terms of a test I've ever taken. But yeah, from there, worked at several, worked at a service provider decided to work at actually on the customer side at Cisco for several years, moved around and did the you know data center, sdn and till, kind of where I'm at now, which is definitely, you know, past 10 years or so been on the pre-sale side and doing what I'm doing now where still opening labs up, still configuring devices but but really doing a lot more of the talking in the architecture side. So really kind of a cliff notes of where I've kind of started and coming from so last 25 years and you know 100 seconds or so wow, that's three ccies, three ccies.
Speaker 1:Yes, I did not know that about you until this conversation. Yeah, I, I didn't either.
Speaker 4:So now we're switched. So this is a storage area networking podcast now. So we're going to talk about Fiber Channel the whole hour. So that's one of my CCIEs. So, yes, that one's not very used to it anymore.
Speaker 1:I did not realize they had a CCIE in storage area.
Speaker 4:They don't anymore.
Speaker 2:Nothing against you, Craig, but if we start talking about Fiber Channel, I might quit my own podcast for the next hour.
Speaker 4:I don't blame you, that's great.
Speaker 2:I did have a question about your role now. So you're customer facing, you're out there in the community. Do you feel like you've got a good line to like product management, product development? Let's say, if you're out with a customer at an event and they come to you and you start having this conversation about this, this potential feature that would really help them, do you feel like you've got a good line to potentially get that, get that change made or or get that enhancement done? Is that kind of part of your role too?
Speaker 4:Yeah, that's definitely part of what we do. There's the easy oh I've got this new box you want to support. But when it is something a little more high level, like a good example is, I was at AutoCon in Denver this past November or so and you really got this idea from everyone that had joined there. It's a vendor neutral conference where you see all these people and all these talks about why haven't we achieved automation yet, and it really gives you that sort of strategic ideas like, hey, you know if we can do something or even work with other people to help get automation in network engineering to be something that people actually use and not something we've talked about for 15 years or so. That is kind of those sorts of things. So, yeah, I take what I take from individual customers and what I do in the community whether it is, you know in, you know my local nugs or things like that to be able to take it back to our products.
Speaker 2:So absolutely, so another thing you were traditional what I call traditional I probably shouldn't use that phrase but yeah, you went from being traditional network engineer to you were talking about ccies. Uh, in the past and in the future, you know, you've really been in. In the recent past you've been focusing on, uh, cloud, public cloud, like what has taken you from traditional network engineering to more of a cloud and public cloud focus.
Speaker 4:So the reason I kind of made that switch and my focus there is purely from a networking perspective in the cloud. Like I don't plan on being an application developer or an SRE or anything like that, but I've seen a real dearth of people understanding how networking works in the cloud and the secret is it's really much easier. I don't have to configure MPLS or SRV6 or anything like that on AWS or Azure or anything like that. They have a few everything's IP, there's a few extra contracts they do. But it really makes me a little sad when I see really really smart network engineers that are just like they see the public cloud and they're like I don't want to do that, I don't touch it.
Speaker 4:It's like it's really really super easy. It's like there are some constructs and there's some things you have to understand. Of course they have their own quirks and it does like if AWS is different than Azure, which is different than GCP, which is different than Oracle, so it's a little more work to get there, but being able to like, hey, you know, you really can get this and you know I've just found every organization, right or wrong, has some sort of cloud presence, either going to the cloud or repatriating or, you know, heaven forbid multi-cloud which terrible idea. Don't ever do that, but yeah, being able to. You know you've got to be able to understand those sort of constructs here, and whether it is you're using the native tools or you're using a digital twin to figure those sorts of things out, I found that to be, you know, a really good career path for me, because most of the when I go to reInfant and go to re-invent and I was at reinforce last week, you know, you, you talked to a lot of people.
Speaker 2:Even there they like I. We don't do networking as no, that's just, that's the redhead stepchild, even in the cloud. So yeah, well, with that comment on uh, multi-cloud, I think you you just volunteered yourself to join an episode of the cables clouds podcast. I'm sure you'll be getting that email.
Speaker 1:I'm sure yes, yes so as, as somebody that's done, you know the on-prem or traditional network engineering and then transition to cloud, what, what? What advice can you offer to somebody to get them to to flip that switch, instead of saying, oh, no, no, that's not for me to say, yes, charge forward, so I will.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I will say first do what I did. The way I started is get involved in the community. It's absolutely the best. We've had some really good, you know, traditional on-prem whatever you want to call it kind of community meetups and things like that. But there's definitely some great ones on the cloud side as well, and there's such a dearth of networking people like us, so you're absolutely welcome there. The resources are really good.
Speaker 4:Now, don't get me wrong. You can get yourself in trouble by deploying something and, oops, I put a charge here, but most of us really aren't running traffic, so you can easily look up all of the things, have game days where you're looking up. You know, here's a cloud formation template to to create something here, and you know, so it's. I am this is my own bias. I am much more of a learn by doing person.
Speaker 4:You know I definitely, you know, want to understand the theory behind things, but being able to, like, really go out there and play with it, and that's the first way you do it. And then you realize, oh, this is totally not the way you should do it at all, because this is not the cloud way of doing things, because now you're just clicking around on a console. Then you start going to say, okay, maybe I should start learning how to compose this with Terraform or CloudFormation or something like that, so you really can. Then you start understanding how actual cloud engineers do their job, which I would love for traditional network engineers to get that same sort of automation mindset and you can really take those sort of lessons that they have there and apply it to what you already know. So, yeah, it's super easy to get started. There's some really, really great resources out there because, yeah, we just need a lot more cloud knowledge I'm sorry, networking knowledge in the cloud.
Speaker 1:You're an AWS community builder right, that's correct. Knowledge I'm sorry, networking knowledge in the cloud. You're an AWS community builder right, that's correct.
Speaker 4:Yes, I'm in my second year of that Yep.
Speaker 1:Can you talk a little bit about what that program is? How did you get into that program and any sort of benefits either for you personally or otherwise?
Speaker 4:Oh yeah, totally. So I started doing some simple blogging and some videos about, kind of my AWS journey. You know I have some posts of, hey, I built this and you know I set this up and here's you know, here's some basic constructs in here. I recorded some videos, some personally, some for my company, and that's essentially what they want is like hey, if you are engaged in the community, it doesn't matter, it doesn't need to be super technical. You know, I've seen some very, very simple ones as well, but everyone starts at a different level.
Speaker 4:You put in, you know the things you've done for the community and you know they, they look at those sorts of things and yeah, then they're like hey, you know, we'd like you to be a part of the program and that's a pretty. You know they don't have a high acceptance company, but you're actually contributing to the community in some way. They're happy to have you and the benefits are huge. I mean, of course, they send you a nice swag bag. You get discounts on reInvent and reInforce. You get to, you know, and you get access to all these AWS people, some really, really smart people, and that's a gargantuan organization.
Speaker 4:You been to Cisco Live, which is absolutely my favorite event, aws reInvent dwarfs. It. It's four times as many people as Cisco Live. Oh my, yes, I didn't realize that. Yeah, it's like five different hotels that you go through for that one. So it's so much bigger and it's like you're just drowning by the end of that week. So, yeah, but it's the same kind of vibe and everyone's just you know, it's the community, so everyone's just building things and doing things. So, yeah, it's, it's an absolutely rewarding program. You know several of my friends. I know Tim over at Cables to Clouds. I've, you know, several people are are in this and it's it's an absolutely rewarding program. So just just start putting out any sort of content. You know short form blogs. You know TikTok whatever you think is most appropriate for you that helps people wherever they happen to be with their cloud journey. Whether you're starting out learning or whether you want to do super advanced Terraform style concepts, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Awesome. So that sounds pretty similar to you know, vmware vExpert or Cisco Insider Champion program same kind of thing.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I think so. Yeah, I think at the time I was actually at Cisco when they started that program, so I know a lot of people have really enjoyed that program as well.
Speaker 1:I enjoyed it right up until I started working for a competitor. That's how it goes isn't it yeah?
Speaker 2:Craig, I do appreciate the advice around. You know the social media aspect of things you said. To approach it as do whatever makes the most sense for you. You didn't say you know you need to blog or you need to do videos. It's really do whatever. I agree with you do whatever makes the most sense for you and cause otherwise. If you think you're trying to conform to something that you think you need to do to be able to get ahead or reach people, I think it ends up feeling like a job at some point and then you just get bored and disinterested with it.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and that was the advice I'd always gotten to and I'm kind of with the same way. It was like, oh, you need to have your website and you need to do long form blog content, because it hits the analytics and things like that, which I'm not saying those things aren't useful and they're definitely good. But yeah, I mean most of mine is short form kind of content. Short form you know things, things on Discord, things, you know local, actually being in person and hosting and joining actual meetups. So, yeah, I found that to be the most rewarding for me and, like you said, doesn't feel like a job. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Now, just talking about being in person and being at the meetups, I wonder we have to see if this is tracked somewhere. I wonder if you hold the record for the most networking user groups in other States that you attend. It might be a bit.
Speaker 4:Yeah, there's a. Last year was quite a few, this year has not been as many. So, on that, last year we started our our North Texas one up here. So I host that one up here, so anyone that's in the Dallas area. We host them every quarter and, yeah, like our company sponsors them sometimes.
Speaker 4:But even if we didn't, it's, it's great to go meet people and talk to people. And whether you know different levels of content I found for myself, having been in this industry for 20, 25 years, the nugs have a lot of people kind of in that mid early career we had a lot of university students and it's really really cool people, really cool seeing people at different levels of their journey. And you know, I feel for people like you know, it's like networking doesn't get any easier. You know we were doing spanning tree when I was starting in 99 and it's still there. So we just have to layer a whole bunch of things on top of it. So, you know, getting people interested in in network engineering, you know I hope it doesn't. You know I hope it's a growing field and we need more people into it because you know, can't do it forever.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, yeah, we talk about it all the time, but the community aspect of it is so huge, like the, the NUG event that we hosted here in Nebraska a little while back and the event we did through Cisco just last week. The common theme is that people will come to those local events and you keep hearing the hey, I just saw so-and-so, I haven't seen them in 10 years. This is so cool.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, it's great to do that at a local level. You get that at your big Cisco lives, but yeah, to get that at a local and it really just talked that sort of shop. So yeah, I totally agree with that.
Speaker 2:So Craig. What are some of?
Speaker 4:the other industry trends that really peak your interest and have lately. You're not going to make me talk about AI, are you? I'm not going to. No, I'm not going to force that at all.
Speaker 2:But AI did tell me that you were going to say that. Oh, that's true, gotcha.
Speaker 4:Yeah, so you can't ignore that. I wouldn't say I'm an AI skeptic, but I think there is still a large role to play with that in networking. Obviously, it's not escapable, and you were being at Cisco a lot. Every conference I've been at in the past six months, some more than others, really just beat that drum to death and I think we're still searching for use cases for that. Like, I think smart agents in different AI agents is definitely a thing. Co-pilots are absolutely a thing.
Speaker 4:If you were in networking maybe about I don't know 10 years ago at this point, when there was OpenFlow and SDN, I feel like we're sort of at that level of things where we have a technology but we're still searching for the use cases and we'll get there. There are some great startups, there are some great AI ops companies and we're getting there. I definitely think that's going to be a thing. But I don't believe that we will ever get to the point where you don't need network engineers. I mean, obviously. Obviously you need networking more than ever now, because nothing is getting simpler in networking. And, yeah, the the panacea of opening up an LLM and telling me why my application doesn't work. I don't see that, as networking has become more complex, not less complex.
Speaker 2:So what would you say is the closest use case as far as network engineering? So we had, we did AJ it's been a little bit now, but we did and what does AI and network engineering look like? And one of the big use cases that I could see in the recent future was going to be hey, this can help us get proactive as far as troubleshooting People call in. We can have these AI systems that help point us in the right direction. I saw it more of a operations monitoring, visibility, observability, play, not as much maybe on the actual building and operating networks, but do you see that? Conversely, do you think true network engineering use cases you see coming up soon, or what do you see?
Speaker 4:Yeah, I see precisely the same thing. Like I don't see AI, at least at this point, helping us to architect networks and helping to, you know, to build the right network architecture. You know, not saying it's not gonna be. I see it much more in the way you say it, where if I have a trouble ticket, come in and I'm having a problem with a particular application, it can analyze the path with something that actually knows what the network looks like. You have to have the problem with I wouldn't say the problem, but what you have with AI. You need all of that data about your network before AI can even start to make the decision. So until you have a good understanding of all of the network, ai can't really operate on that. Whether it's creating a twin of the network, adding a bunch of analytics and observability data on top of it, you need that level of data to figure all of that out.
Speaker 4:And yeah, I see that. Getting to resolution quicker, figuring out your changes quicker, reviewing mops, things like that I see that as much more of these. Obviously, you may be able to get to the point of hey, I'm having a problem here, it might suggest some changes to fix a particular application. I could see some of that, but I don't see it getting to the point of, hey, I'm building a new data center or I'm building a new application, tell me how I should design my network to do that. I don't see that as being something. So I think it helps all of us because it kind of helps us skill up so that we can be those network architects, so we can understand the more complex versions of networking, versus you know doing the stuff that you know I always love doing, but you know the stuff that's tedious. You know I have an IP address. Okay, where am I Log into the switch? Show IP up. Show Mac table Okay, it's out of this port. Okay, jump to this next switch.
Speaker 2:Do that exact same thing so, which is fun, but it's extremely tedious activity to do so. Yeah, I think that's where it helps and that's a good point that you bring up even on the operations and the troubleshooting side is that even to get to that level the AI and the decision making in the things that it shows you it's only as good as the data that it has of your network and the accuracy there. I think that's a really good thing to point out.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and I think it's having to know all of those things, and I think that's where the data gets pulled in. So a lot of things I've seen on the AI side try to pull in live traffic and tell you what that looks, but that doesn't tell you what. The behavior that tells you what's going on on your network right now. It tells me here. The behavior like that tells you what's going on on your network right now, like it tells me here's the flows I'm seeing, here's all the traffic net flow, whatever it happens to be. It doesn't look at what are all of my possible future things. For that you really need to ingest all of the state data. Show me all of my BGP routes. Show me all my MPLS forwarding tables, show me my VXLAN, vtep to VTEP connectivity. You need a lot more data than people are ingesting today for that to really inform those kind of decisions, to help you kind of make those sort of smart HS types decisions.
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Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, craig you made a great point that what's happening today does really feel like a lot like when we first got introduced to SDN. You know like, oh, this is a great thing, sd-wan. It's just like what are we going to do with that, you know, and SD access and everything, and so now we're starting to see those products really mature. And when people think about starting a new WAN today, I think most people go SD-WAN. I feel like people are less inclined to do the old, maybe more traditional DMVPN style stuff.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I tend to. I worked for big switch networks for several years, so I was all in on SDN and everything it turns out. The biggest use case you're exactly right was SD-WAN. We just don't know exactly where it's going to end up.
Speaker 1:Right. I thought it was really curious. I heard that Cisco has added AI to the CCNA.
Speaker 4:Interesting. Oh, wow, yeah.
Speaker 1:And an upcoming refresh. It's going to be like a really minor revision change. They're going to be adding AI and it's introducing people at that level, like you know, what's the difference between you know LLMs and this and that, and between you know LLMs and this and that, and you know, at first I was just like, really Like, are we there yet? Are we there yet? And then they talk about, like you know how it's useful now as a tool and everything, and so I thought it was very curious, because it is clear that AI is going to be here for the foreseeable future, so why not educate people now on how to properly use it, what the differences are, rather than, if we don't bring it up, people are probably going to abuse it, and that could just lead to worse scenarios.
Speaker 2:You know, speaking of that, AJ, you mentioned the CCNA. You also mentioned that you're toying around and going to jump into doing the CCDE. It's also been announced CCDE AI infrastructure, so you might as well just do that too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's going to be an elective. They're going to drop early next year, so we'll. We'll see when I end up taking the exam.
Speaker 4:Yeah, aws did something very similar. They've announced two AI certifications, so I think you're going to see it across the board.
Speaker 1:Yeah, AWS did something very similar. They've announced two AI certifications, so I think you're going to see it across the board. Yeah, absolutely Yep. Now, craig, I understand you have a background in 5G networks.
Speaker 4:Yeah, so my first job out of working for the VAR was working for an outfit Some of our older members may remember them Singular Wireless. Oh yeah, yes, so they're all AT&T now. So back then it was not 5G, this was 2G, pre-iphone days back with the Motorola Razr, some of the early brick Windows mobile smartphones, and so I love that. I love dealing with those types of networks. But the problem is back then and it's not too dissimilar to how networking was back then is that it was all locked up into vendors, like you had to deal with. You know, at the time, motorola's, nokia's, they had their own sort of applications because it's a whole different, like it's all IP under the hood, but it's a whole different technology stack that you deal with. You know, from how does the phone that you have communicate with the radio tower, which communicates with the 5G backend network and communicates with all the different components that you use to talk to, how they bill you, how they track your minutes, how they track your text messages, how you get on the internet? Back then it was very and even up to very recently it was very much a closed ecosystem and unless you work for a Verizon or an AT&T or something like that. You didn't get to be involved in that at all.
Speaker 4:What I like now is there are lots of carriers now, both in the US and worldwide, that have adopted what's called Open RAN or Open 5GC, which is essentially an open environment that just like networking in general is. Anybody can slot their vendor into it and you can practice and play around with 5G components all the way down to a phone level with just a simple like AWS has a cloud formation template you can just launch right up. We can even put it in the show notes and show you exactly how to launch that environment and see here's exactly all the different places. And so I've absolutely loved dealing with service provider mobile networks. 5g, of course, is not going away. It's becoming much more of an enabler. It's. You know. I remember when you know what was it? City Wi-Fi was supposed to be a thing and 5G just kind of swept all of that away.
Speaker 4:So, yeah, it's becoming much more of a global enabler on a lot of things and it's a piece of the network that has been locked up. And even traditional network engineers most of them don't understand what's called the RAN network, the radio access network. They don't understand that part of the network. Yeah, oh, you do Okay.
Speaker 2:No, no, no, I am them. I don't understand.
Speaker 4:Yeah, so being. But having it all open now, having having you know actual, real carriers, both here and and abroad, that have adopted this, let people get into this without having to, you know, locked up. Like I said, it reminds me of the early days of networking where, if you wanted to learn, you know Cisco, you, you better go, you know, go on eBay at the time, buy a bunch of 2500s, rack them all up and set them up. Whereas you know for the past several, you know now it's all virtual, you know you CML or even G. It's the same kind of thing and I'm really excited to see it happening on the on, the on that the carrier side of the network.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's that's. I had no idea. That's really cool.
Speaker 2:Well, I think just LTE and 5G in general. It's been talked about for a long time that hey, especially now with SD-WAN, hey, you can bring in these LTE and these 5G networks to be your backup circuit. But now we're talking about it being primetime active. I mean these carriers are going after uh, customers both on the business and residential sides, to be that active network for them.
Speaker 4:Oh yeah, when I, when I opened up the speed test on my phone and it's like 800 megabits, I'm like that's, that's, that's pretty compelling. So absolutely, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's funny that the uh, you know just the the whole history of wireless and everything right Like wireless used to be the long haul method of communication and then wired was your last mile, but now it's. It's very much.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I didn't think about it that way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, craig, how, how do you, how do you manage to keep up with all of this stuff? I mean, cloud is huge on its own, and then you own, and then you know you're talking about 5g wireless networks. Like how, how do you do it?
Speaker 4:so I, you know, I I devote a decent amount of my time to one keeping up with the industry. So I'm uh, you know, I'm on your guys's uh, the the. That's all about the journey discord. I love talking with people on that. People are always posting about different cloud things. Different, you know, new things come up or that are done either by the vendors or just people that are interesting.
Speaker 4:I'm very active on X myself and, yeah, it's, it's essentially just consuming a lot of that data to see the new things that are coming out and to see like, oh, that sounds really interesting. I want to kind of dig into that a little bit and that's like this is the same thing. That's what drove me to to going into cloud environments as well. It's like I kept seeing people. Not that I you can ever finish with traditional networking, but it was like you know, you know I've I've kind of got a good handle on most of the technology. Obviously, there's there's always more to do, but this was something really new to learn and that's I'm always been a lifelong learner, so I like that stage in the learning process where I am kind of the I'm just kind of figuring out, I'm good enough to be dangerous. You know it's like, yeah, I mean so.
Speaker 4:To me that's the most exciting part of my career and I love that. I get to redo it over and over and over again, whether it's you know, you know, 20 years ago it would have been OSPF and BGP. And then, you know, 10 years ago it would have been Fiber Channel and Fabric Path and things like that. And you know, eight years ago, sdn. And then you know, the past several years it's been cloud. So for me, that is just a and it's something I love to do, it's something I love to impart on people to like, hey, look at this cool can build a real simple network using Terraform inside AWS. And I was like just a month into like kind of figuring all of that out, and it was just like it was to be able to like, oh, is this like Ansible? It's like well, sort of it's a little different, but it's like, yeah, being able to. So that to me that's the that's the most favorite part of this industry is being able to be that kind of eternal learner and things.
Speaker 1:So there's two key points that I took away from that statement. One you stay up on networking by networking, yes. And two I'm guessing you don't suffer from imposter syndrome.
Speaker 4:No, I mean, I think the imposter syndrome you definitely had that. I definitely had that earlier in my career. But for me, I know most of the time. I know the parts that I know and I know there's a lot that I don't, but it's being able to know, like having done this several times. It's the confidence in knowing, yes, I don't know this, but I can figure it out and the resources are there for me to figure it out.
Speaker 4:There was a time, like I mentioned in my career, when it's like I don't have the resources. I don't really, but there's so many different ways, whether they are formal training, whether you want to open up a Udemy course, whether you just want to start playing, like I do. There's so many resources and yeah, I may not know a particular piece, but I know I can figure it out. So that's how I kind of overcome that imposter syndrome side, because, yeah, there's obviously so much I don't know, but yeah, it's being able to. So the resources are there and being able to ask for help if I don't know what it is Like. You know, I consider myself in a lot of ways the eternal beginner in a lot of things, even though I've mastered a lot of things but it's the best part of the career.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that's great. I think it's really cool that you remember and recognize I've mastered and learned complex topics in the past. I know that there are resources available to me that I can consume and learn, and then if I really need help, I can just ask for it. You own what you know, you own what you don't know and you keep moving forward and I think that's a great way to face it.
Speaker 4:That's awesome yeah, I think it's. Just don't be afraid to look stupid. I mean, it's, it's, it's it. You know, I do it every day. It's like oh yeah, I didn't know that. Huh, okay, yeah, it's that's.
Speaker 2:We've got about 150 episodes of looking stupid and look at us, we're kick-ass, but you know the the whole uh thing. I mean. That really strikes home for us and especially just recently we did an episode with Quinn Snyder and Jason Belk that if I was going to teach somebody to somebody else, then I needed to be an expert in that given thing before I had the confidence to be able to try to teach that to somebody else. And you know, we've kind of proven that it's the opposite of that, Because if you know enough to be able to teach it to somebody else, it's going to help that other person learn, it's going to help you solidify those as well. So what you mentioned about doing that presentation, you know, within a month of learning something new, I think that that's, you know, a perfect example of that concept.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I think to drive that home, that's the best way to make sure you have kind of understood the topic, that is, being able to teach it. And you may not know and you know you're not going to get everything right the first time but going through that process of like, okay, don't just have this in my head, I'm going to put this in a slide deck or a presentation or something and be able to really talk about this and being able to to play enough of that stump the chump, which is obviously my favorite game, where you know you're doing a presentation. I was like you know some people. You know you want to appear smart, that's fine, or you just want to. You know you really are genuinely curious. It's like, oh, never considered that.
Speaker 4:So doing that part is my favorite part, whether it's in my job day to day or whether it's doing presentations and things like that. Like you know, I'm doing a session next week on AWS network troubleshooting using just basically AWS command line stuff. So it's really being able to understand that, which I don't normally do, but being able to like okay, here's how you would troubleshoot your AWS network Like you were a network engineer not going clicking around, not not opening up a sniffer, but being able to do that. So yeah, it's being able to go through that over and over again I find super rewarding.
Speaker 2:So selfish question for you, Greg, because you do, you do a lot of community talks, you're you're doing content creation and all that. So I'm I'm trying to do more of that as well, especially on the content creation side, and sometimes I'll be honest with you I have a hard time, kind of that writer's block thing where it's like, okay, what, what do I create content on now? So how do you come up with those ideas? Is it something that you're working on that you say, hey, this would be good to create content on? Do you try to find things that are industry trends? What does that thought process look for you for creating content and also doing presentations?
Speaker 4:So I will say it is less about industry trends for me. If I were doing industry trends, I would hop on AI things and things like that, which I totally believe are super valuable, but it's not exactly my thing and I don't feel like I have a particular voice there. I think it is discovering where your voice is and what you're good at and where you came from Like mine is having a lot of experience in networking and moving on to kind of that pre-sales role and talking, being able to really empathize with network engineers, and I take it from that direction. It's like what would I have liked at some point in my career. Obviously, it's not the same thing, but I wish I would have had someone to help me out, understand this or tell me how to, not just, you know, not the product level.
Speaker 4:Here's how this protocol works, but hey, I've been thrust into this situation and I need to troubleshoot this. Help me how to troubleshoot this particular thing, or help me really understand how a particular forwarding path works, because being able to really get to that so I find, for me, that's how I approached it. So industry trends are always a little bit so obviously I'm taking up. Whenever I see something it's like oh okay, automation or something like that. Definitely you do hit some of that, but for me it is really being able to understand what exactly I can provide and what would have been useful to me. It's like you know, I remember spending six months on this, doing building labs myself. I wish I would have had someone to point me in the right direction and not, you know, not waste my time doing all the wrong ways of doing something.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's good advice and I think see that a lot with with people that create content. I know that in the past I've run against stuff, that's I just beat my head against the wall trying to figure something out and then I find somebody that did this article. That is exactly you know, a blog article.
Speaker 2:That's exactly what I'm, uh, what I'm going after, and I usually, if, if I see that and see that benefit, I usually try to find the person, person and hit them up and say, hey, I know you wrote this thing seven years ago, but it just helped me today.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I get that sometimes too.
Speaker 2:Yes, if I've written or did a video on years ago, it's like oh yeah, I guess I sort of did do that one, yeah the best stories, too, are people who do blogs and content years ago and all of a sudden they're trying to figure something out and they Google it and they find their own article or their own video, yeah. Aj's done that, yeah.
Speaker 4:I've done that, yeah, yep.
Speaker 1:Completely forgot how to do something. Google it my blog article is the first entry. I'm like well, I knew it at one point. I can yeah.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I had a similar one where I had a recent customer do it I think it was Fabric Path and I was like I totally forgot how Fabric Path works and the first thing I found was an article I wrote on it in 2011. So I was like geez.
Speaker 1:That's amazing, I think, given everyone present here on this particular episode, we should take a minute and talk about the USNUA and your local NUG. So all three of us are NUG leaders. Craig, you lead the NUG down in North Texas, tim leads his out in Omaha and I lead mine here in Burlington, vermont. How can folks get involved with the USNUA?
Speaker 4:So, yeah, if you are interested in attending, usnuacom has all the list of all the recent ones there. There's also a really really good Slack resource so you can join the Slack and have some discussions there about just you know, similar networking trends or new events coming up If you're interested in leading one that same place and you can start talking about it, because there's plenty of cities out there. Like I run the North Texas, we have one down in Houston, but there's lots of places that we don't have one. So, you know, I found that there are, you know, other places that you know similar to. You know a couple of other ones where there's a lot of vendor focused networking forums and being able to go to a place and know that it's not talking about a particular vendor and we're just we're all just network engineers and we want to be able to talk about that and it's like, yeah, getting those sorts of things.
Speaker 4:So I definitely recommend anyone come out. It's not scary, you know, and you can be at any point in your career. Like you know, we have university students all the way up to you know people that have been doing this for 40 years. So it's just a great time and everyone has a really cool topic to talk about and you always learn something. No matter where you're at, you're always going to learn something from somebody.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I will say, having been involved in other user groups, that is one thing that is different about the USNUA and these NUGS.
Speaker 1:They are truly low low pressure sales environments so well in previous groups that I've been involved in we'd have sponsors and depending on the level of sponsorship, determine how much talk time you got in front of the audience, and there was these really hard pitches on products and stuff like that. Uh, and then you might have a presentation from somebody locally that talked about some really cool topic, how they did some automation or whatever. But these are truly no sales pitch events, if they're done correctly anyway, and so it's really great to just hear people engage on a panel or a really neat presentation on how they tackle the problem or some new emerging tech. They're just plain fun events and there's a lot of time built in to actually network with local network engineers or people with networking-focused jobs. So these are just great events and I personally can't encourage people enough to take a look at them and get involved. And, like Craig said, if there isn't one in your area, start one up. They're super easy.
Speaker 1:The staff at USNUA they take care of all the work. They find the sponsors, they help negotiate rates with places to do the events. You don't have to do any of that. You do like a half hour meeting every couple of weeks leading up to the event and then obviously the most work you put in is day off. But other than that it's. They really couldn't be easier. Tim, what's your experience been like out in Omaha?
Speaker 2:That's exactly what I was going to say, aj. One of the first questions I asked when wanting thinking about starting one of these up was what's, what's the time involved? Because you know, I didn't, because I didn't want to have to put in a whole bunch of time and effort, given work and family and all that. And I would say my feedback is don't let the phrase group leader scare you. To AJ's point, there is a team that does a lot of this. I mean, you're asked to give some ideas of what would be good venues, maybe give some ideas of who you think would be good sponsors. And to AJ's point, that leadership team at the USNUA handles all of that. They talk to the venues. You really need to receive the shirts and the stickers and that kind of stuff and then you work the day of the it's. I think what you get out of it is you know it's converse to what you usually say what you get out of it is much more than what you need to put into it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I agree for sure. Uh, craig, uh, our time is flying by here. In the last few minutes we have, is there anything that we should have asked you, or is there anything that you want to talk about that we haven't yet touched?
Speaker 4:So yeah, I mean, in terms of, I think you've kind of covered you know my career and a couple of the interests so I'm kind of interested in you know we talked about kind of moving on and things. So I know I tend to be the eternal beginner and I get inspired by you know. I know I tend to be the eternal beginner and I get inspired by you know events like like AWS reinvent and Cisco live and things like that. So I I'm kind of curious on your guys. So just flip it around. What are your sources of, of inspiration of, like you said you were going for the CCD, what? What made you kind of decide to do that? Cause I have the same sort of. I'm going for the solution, I'm going for the AWS solutions architect one which is a not not as not to that level, of course, but it's, it's the premier certification. So I'm kind of curious here and just anybody else's perspective.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so. So there was. There was a couple of things that really pushed me to decide to go for the CCDE. So at one point I wanted it right. Like I've always been into network design, it's been one of my favorite topics. You know, when thecda was a thing that, like I got my ccna and then I immediately went and got my ccda, uh, and I love design so much like I studied the crap out of that exam, you know, and I and that's one of the few cisco exams I passed like the first time around I really wanted to do the ccdp but they changed the cert program. Uh, before I was able to get my CCNP, I did the enterprise design exam for my CCNP. So I love design. I'm at a point in my career where I'm doing an architect position. Now I don't really touch the keyboard anymore. Does it make sense to go for the CCIE? No, not really. It's just not part of my day-to-day anymore. But thinking about, how do I create these environments that support demos and stuff like that?
Speaker 1:that is a very big part of my job and always, having been interested in the CCDE from the beginning, cisco Live definitely inspired me to want to get back out there and study again. There was this fire inside me at one point that said go for an expert level, sir. You know, I never thought I would get my CCNP. So to be this close to go and get an expert level, sir, I I gotta at least try it. You know, the other thing that actually inspired me to go do it was Nick Russo's passing. So as we record this episode, a few weeks ago we lost Nick Russo to a very early, uh, untimely passing. Uh, and. And nick nick's 38, that's, he's younger than I am now. Wow, uh, and. And as far as expert level certifications go, he'd accomplish three and I've got zero. Um, I mean, he's done countless other things for the community where the content is created.
Speaker 1:Uh, there's. There's absolutely no comparison there, but remembering that, hey, we're not here forever and time's just ticking, so I have decided to make the commitment to go and get the CCDE. I've bought a whole bunch of books that I'm very excited to read. I reinvested in a Kindle because I don't have room for all those physical books again, and so I'm very excited to get started on this journey. And I'm hoping I'm thinking you know, because, as we kind of discussed earlier in the episode, the best way to learn something is to learn it with the intent to teach it. So I want to learn these topics on the CCDE and teach them through either, you know, blogging, short form content, you know, maybe talk about it on a podcast episode if it makes sense for us to talk about it as a group. But you know that's that's the goal. So I'm hoping to be able to take the written at some point in the next year and then we'll see when, when we do the actual lab. But that's the short term.
Speaker 4:Very cool, very cool. Yeah, I tend to agree with that a little bit Like I'm at a point in my career that an actual certification probably won't help me in career wise and things like that. But yeah, it's definitely seeing everyone out there and seeing like it's, it's a mark of kind of yes, I, I know I have at least got this kernel of. You know, we used to say when I, when I did the CCIE, that was just the beginning and I believe it's the same thing for any level, any sort of an expert level certification that's just the beginning of the journey of it. You know, it's a way for me personally to kind of mark, give me kind of a hard marker model. So it's like, okay, I've done this, now I can. You know, I feel better about moving on to the next thing or enhancing my knowledge in a particular area. So I totally agree. There's expert level certification. Well, definitely not easy and don't you know, don't overdo them in terms of your work-life balance, but 100%.
Speaker 1:Awesome Tim. Any thoughts on expert level certification for you?
Speaker 2:No, nothing wrong with that. The commentary I do want to add there is that I think I'm I'm at a point in my career that I think I can really start leaning into things that interest me more and more. Um, I, I've for the longest time it's been with a network focus, uh, but for the longest time I've's been with a network focus but for the longest time I've really been intrigued by different security concepts. So I'm kind of starting to lean into that a little bit. But you know, craig said that he was the eternal newcomer, the eternal, not newcomer, but eternal learner.
Speaker 2:I think I am the eternal generalist and I get my, I really get my fire from from, you know, finding those adjacent things and, where I like, being able to to see as close as I can, to provide that the, the big picture or the whole picture. And I, I really haven't ever been drawn into, um, you know, becoming narrowly narrow, focused on on a specific thing, at least enough to go after something at the expert level. But if I were AJ, I would probably align with where you're at, because I've been big on the design, being able to look at that big picture. When I did the CCMP, the enterprise, the design specialty was what I had my sights set on and got, so I think you and I align a lot there.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm trying to start a study group, man, so if you have second thoughts about wanting to do that, there's a seat here for you.
Speaker 2:That seat might get cold.
Speaker 1:And the last time I started a study group, a podcast came out of it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, maybe you'll make a movie this time.
Speaker 1:I'm trying to think of what's going to happen next. Nice, nice, awesome Craig. This has been a fun conversation. If people want to get to know more about you, where can they go? So?
Speaker 4:on X. I'm at Captain Packet. Of course I'm on LinkedIn as well. You can just search for my name there. But as well, you can just search for my name there. But yeah, I'm also active on the All About the Journey Discord. So any one of those places generally, any one of the platforms you search for Captain Packet, you'll find me Xbox Live, anything.
Speaker 1:Literally everywhere. That's awesome, craig. Thank you so much for joining us. This has again been such a really fun conversation. It was great to get to know you and your career. I love all the little tidbits we pulled out here about just really owning being a learner, so thank you very much for sharing those insights. Thank you very much, awesome, and we'll see you next time on another episode of the Art of Network Engineering podcast.
Speaker 3:Hey there, friends, we hope you enjoyed listening to that episode Just as much as we did recording it. If you want to hear more, make sure you subscribe to the show and your favorite podcatcher you can also give that little bell rascal A little ringy dingy, so you know when we release new episodes. If you're social like we are, you can follow us on twitter and instagram. We are at art of net inch, that's art of n-e-t-e-n-g. You can also find us on that weaving web that is the internet, at artofnetworkengineeringcom. There you'll find our show notes and some blog articles from the hosts, guests and other friends who just like getting their thoughts down on that virtual paper. Until next time, friends, thanks for listening.
