The Art of Network Engineering
The Art of Network Engineering blends technical insight with real-world stories from engineers, innovators, and IT pros. From data centers on cruise ships to rockets in space, we explore the people, tools, and trends shaping the future of networking, while keeping it authentic, practical, and human.
We tell the human stories behind network engineering so every engineer feels seen, supported, and inspired to grow in a rapidly changing industry.
For more information, check out https://artofnetworkengineering.com
The Art of Network Engineering
The State of the Network Engineering Union, with William Collins & Scott Robohn
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What if the future of network engineering isn't just about cables and hardware, but about mastering the cloud and cybersecurity? Join me, Andy Lapteff, as I sit down with industry giants William Collins and Scott Robohn to uncover the secrets of thriving in this ever-evolving field. William, now a cloud automation expert at Alkira, takes us through his journey from systems administrator to a key player in multi-cloud network software, and shares insights from his own podcast, the Cloud Gambit. Meanwhile, Scott shares wisdom from his 35-year career in networking, offering a unique perspective on how to navigate the industry's seismic shifts with optimism and foresight.
As the realm of network engineering transforms, we examine the commoditization of networking as a utility and what it means for professionals in the field. Amidst the pressures of standardization and falling prices, the conversation turns to emerging technologies like 5G, 6G, and network security that promise new opportunities. We emphasize the timeless importance of core skills such as TCP/IP, even as the industry leans more towards software. We also delve into the 'cowboy' days of the 90s and 2000s, contrasting those times with today's structured and strategic approach, providing invaluable insights for both newcomers and veterans in the field.
Technology never stands still, and neither should your skill set. We explore how to adapt and thrive amidst technological change, discussing how automation can enhance job satisfaction and ease the learning curve. We expand on the importance of foundational skills and certifications, like Cisco's CCNA, remaining relevant even as cloud and cybersecurity take center stage. Tune in to uncover how network engineering can be your stepping stone into lucrative emerging fields, learn how to leverage Python and Terraform, and understand the intricate dynamics behind cloud adoption. Let us guide you through the maze of AI in network engineering, as we dissect the hype and highlight the real innovations that could reshape our professional landscapes.
Full show notes, transcript and links: https://artofnetworkengineering.com/episodes/the-state-of-the-network-engineering-union-with-william-collins-scott-robohn
For everything AONE: https://artofnetworkengineering.com/
The Art of Network Engineering
Speaker 1This is the Art of Network Engineering podcast . In this podcast , we 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 .
Speaker 2Welcome to the Art of Network Engineering podcast . My name is Andy Laptev , I am at Andy Laptev on the Twitters and tonight I am joined by two . What are you ? Are you behemoths of industry ? Are you what's the term Not behemoths ?
Speaker 3Titans , titans , titans of industry . Let's start over .
Speaker 2Tonight , we are joined by two titans of industry William Collins and Scott Robon . Did I pronounce that right ? I should know your last name Got it . It's like putting a robe on Yep Just keep it on .
Speaker 4Awesome .
Speaker 2So a special shout out thank you to William for jumping on last second . A couple of folks are sick on the Art Network Engineering and couldn't make it , so William jumped in . Spoiler William has another recording with us coming up soon , all about , I think , cloud . So , william , we get to hang out a couple times , which is great , and then I'm going to see both of you next week at a USNUA event , so we are like new BFFs . I'm really loving all the time we're spending together .
Speaker 3Let's do some quick intros here .
Speaker 2So , william , for folks living under a rock , who are you ? Where do you work ? What do you do ?
Speaker 3Yeah , William Collins , so I've been doing . I started out like system admin , data center , grinding my gears , load balancing , CSS , all those things back in the day , and then when cloud adoption hit , I jumped pretty hard into cloud . So I've been doing this stuff for probably around 20 years , really focused heavily on cloud automation , AI and security stuff . And I work for a startup . So I work for Alkira . We build multi-cloud network software . We're kind of like a network platform . So I did work in enterprise for a very long time , which is where I really grinded and got to know technology . And then startup life has been , I think , going on three and a half four years now .
Speaker 2So so your career trajectory is very much in line with what we're going to talk about today . It sounds like you did all the things right and I am learning from you every day . I continue to . What's the name of the startup you work at ?
Speaker 3Alkira . Yeah , Alkira . So the Khan brothers , Amer and Atif Khan , formerly Viptela , which is now Cisco SD-WAN . So that was their startup and they started Alkira following that .
Speaker 4I like to point out that they're former Juniper before they were former Alkira . You know what's funny about that .
Speaker 3I went to an event and this is a funny story . I go to an event . Atif walks in and like there was like a convergence , this massive convergence of people in a giant circle and they were all ex-Juniper just in this gigantic circle , in this event . It was absolutely hilarious .
Speaker 2That's what they do . They're kind of like attracted to each other . I see over your right shoulder a very cool logo sign . So what podcast did you create ? And host .
Speaker 3I always forget to promote this thing . So the Cloud Gambit podcast I'm the host . Recently I have a co-host , so Yvonne Sharp joined me . So we are having all sorts of conversations , everything from like venture capital , how startups get funded , to the technology itself . I talk to a lot of founders , startup folks like that and just interesting conversations that are kind of like network engineering and cloud adjacent as well , Because it's good to know about the people around you . It pays dividends later on .
Speaker 2I was joking with William before the show that if I knew Yvonne was in the market I would have grabbed her . But you did , and that's a great get . I love , I love Yvonne and I'm really enjoying the show . The addition of Yvonne has definitely not that the show wasn't incredible before , but I really love your , your conversations .
Speaker 3Yeah , she's the cloud psychologist for sure . Or philosopher cloud philosopher . I got to get it right . She is the cloud philosopher , For sure . Or philosopher cloud philosopher .
Speaker 2I got to get it right she is the cloud philosopher , cloud whisperer , awesome . Well , thanks , william . Great intro , great stuff . Scott , who are you ? What do you do ? Where do you work ?
Speaker 4Hey , thank you for having me on . The short version is I'm an independent consultant in networking no-transcript but I've got almost 35 years in the networking business . I'm one of these very fortunate individuals that I got in just before the commercial internet started really getting traction and there was always opportunities to learn , learn , learn new stuff . And , andy , when you wanted to talk about this tonight , yeah , let's talk about this . I think there's way more hope and way more positives that we can talk about here , even when we're dealing with being disrupted personally and in an industry .
Speaker 2Yeah , perfect segue . So let's jump into the topic , the roundtable . Whatever we're doing here , you know , scott , one of the reasons I brought you two in is you guys travel all over the place . You're always , it seems like every time I see you , you're somewhere else and you're , you know , with networking or with cloud folks , or so you guys get around a lot more than I do to all these different events and Scott's experience . You know , we talked about having you on the show , scott , and we started talking about what are we going to talk about ? And I know that you go around talking about network operations a lot with teen ops and it's , it's a great show , it's a great conversation . Listen , I'm a network operator , so like it's , it's near and dear to my heart and I love your vision and your goal of like . How can we and I don't want to bastardize the , the , the mission statement , but my understanding is you're trying to like , codify , you know what are best practices that we could follow in network operations , because it really seems like every place is kind of doing their own thing and kind of doing some of this , some of that and , like you know , even just . I mean , I know that we have bodies of standards and you know , but it really just seems like everything is a snowflake everywhere . So I really like the conversations you've been having , but again , having you on , I'm like , well , I don't just want to have the teen ops conversation , what are we going to talk about ? And I started thinking like so , like because of our show and because of , I guess , what I do , like I have a ton of people I'm working with , like four different people right now that approach me like hey , I want to get into network engineering . You know , I got out of the military or I'm in college or I'm studying cyber , like I want to get into network engineering . And I found your show , I found your . Whatever , what's your advice ? And this happens to me all the time , and my advice five , seven years ago I'm not sure is the best advice to give today .
Speaker 2Because it seems to me and I don't know if this is my bias , which is why I want to talk to you guys but it seems like there's a lot changing in IT , in the networking space , right , like cloud came in and disrupted everything . I think before that , you know , automation was a big disruptor . And when , for me , when these new quote unquote new things came in to my life . I was drowning in just keeping the lights on at places . So when they said , well , now you have to learn automation , you got to be kidding me . I'm doing four maintenance windows a week . I'm exhausted . This has been going on for years . When am I supposed to do that ?
Speaker 2And then it was simultaneously cloud . We merged with another company . We were in one cloud , they were in four . Now we're a multi-cloud . Now you have to be cloud-versed .
Speaker 2So again , this is probably just my bias , but I was introduced to things like automation and cloud in production environments of just . There wasn't enough time to learn this stuff . So when I got out of production , when a vendor grabbed me and said , hey , let's come over here and work on making customer experience better , I'm like great , I am not studying anymore . I am sick of this shit , because I was burned out , honestly and I just stopped studying . So I'm going to shut up soon . But where I'm going with all this is I stopped studying . I went to a vendor . I felt great , now I'm just going to smile and be charming and be the voice of the customer and make things better for this company's customers .
Speaker 2And then all these rounds of layoffs start happening in tech and I get hit by one of them and months go by and I'm like , how the hell am I not getting a job ? I'm like a smart person . I've worked on some of the world's biggest networks . I'm a publicly known person . I think I have a good reputation , I have integrity and I can't freaking land anything . What is going on ? So bring it back to our topic .
Speaker 2My experience has been there's been a lot of transition , a lot of things going on . People come to me and ask me what should I do to get into networking or what should I do to stay skilled up , and I guess I just like to start maybe with you , scott . You've been around a long time , you've seen a lot of this . You said something before the show of like this has happened before , so do we want to start there ? Like , is what's happening now ? A is my perception that there's a lot of change happening right now in IT and in network engineering , specifically happening Like that's not just my cognitive bias . Right , like the commoditization of networking . Now it's a utility , nobody cares , let's automate everything away . We haven't even gotten to AI yet , so we'll get there . Right , but is that happening ? Is this a thing that's happening right now from your perspective .
Speaker 4Yeah , you're not wrong . Right , You're not just feeling something . You're being impacted by changes in the industry and without doing a whole history lesson that I'm probably not really qualified to give beyond that 30-year window , look , we can look at all sorts of examples in manufacturing in particular from the industrial revolution , of how things have changed that have been labor-saving mechanisms but definitely have impacted people's lives and disrupted them , and there's good and bad in all of that . Right , I'm not want to , I'm not trying to put a pretty face on oh , it's all just great and people are never impacted . Right , you gotta be honest about that In our in our day and age . Right , I mean , let's go back to programmers . Right , there were punch cards and there was programming in assembler and other much lower level languages . That's not how you program most machines today .
Speaker 2Yeah .
Speaker 4So there's been change , there's been disruption and evolution there , right , and we could come up with a you know many different examples , I think , for the conversation . Let's just assume that there's always going to be change of some sort . It could happen more quickly or less quickly . I think , andy , what you're reacting to realistically is an acceleration of some of that change and a couple of things that have piled up on you and others all at once . I'll breathe and see if William has something to add there too .
Speaker 3Yeah , I mean those are all good points . You said something about you said , commoditization . You know networking as a utility . I think that's an interesting .
Evolving Landscape of Network Engineering
Speaker 3So one thing I try to do is I try to take alternate viewpoints , sometimes just to tease out the conversation and maybe even challenge folks sometimes , because I actually just had a long conversation about this with someone like a week ago , and it's funny like this industry is evolving in like so many ways and there is commoditization .
Speaker 3But like , what are ? Like , if you think about commoditization , what are actually the signs so you could take um , uh , like , maybe standardization , so networking protocols or you know a lot has been standardized to make , you know , make it easier for vendors to , you know , offer competing products and such right . You know there's um downward price pressures . You know that's another sign , maybe like , like you know you have competition , so you have this like downward pressure on prices , you know , for many networking and telecom services . But then you have , you know , like you said , cloud sort of came along and it accelerated the aspects that can be commoditized just like so fast , like so all at once . Commoditized just like so fast , like so all at once . So all of these things are like key indicators of you know some broader picture of commoditization , but you also and this is where I think it's a beautiful thing so like looking at the , you know the other end of the coin .
Speaker 3There's a lot of factors that like counter this . So one area that I am just not even well versed in at all , I don't , I actually don't I want to stay away from this area , but if you look at like 5G and 6G , like those types of technologies , they are very innovative , they're very much differentiated . So that's like an alternate indicator . And then you have like network security . You know threats evolve , the threat landscape , your attack surface , there's endpoints , everywhere everything can be attacked . And now you have chat GPT , so it's accelerated like 100% , probably a lot more actually I don't even want to know what that number is . But there's this ongoing demand for more advanced security solutions and more advanced security practitioners . And it's funny because a lot of the security folks that I've rubbed shoulders with over the years , a lot of them aren't technical , like on the network engineering side . So you need skills like network engineering , like , are you going to go ask somebody that doesn't understand network engineering to look at a packet capture ?
Speaker 2I think not , not going to happen and the pushback I would offer . On that I agree with everything you're saying . Right Is so for the commoditization , like networking was my job . I was the person who built , created . You need a VLAN , you come to me , right . Then cloud comes along , you push a button , you get a 172.16 and you're done and the network just magically exists . So I hear what you're saying and I agree with you that the paradigm shift that cloud brought to the networking world . Like they figured out what we didn't . We be the networking industry . Right , like all right .
Speaker 3Well , now it's easy and now .
Speaker 2it's quick and just push a button , right .
Speaker 3So I don't know how .
Speaker 2I can show value to my company when they're like well , we can just do this in cloud buddy and push a button .
Speaker 3To answer your original question , though , what I was going to say as far as getting so , there's a big difference between somebody that is like newly wanting to come into network engineering and somebody that's already there that's saying , hey , I need to stay relevant in this industry , and I think and I want to talk to both of those audiences because I think , yeah , sure , I mean , they're both talking to us , right Wondering .
Speaker 3And if you're newly coming in , I still think if you want network engineering to be your trade , then you need to learn the core fundamentals . You need to learn TCP IP . I have two TCP IP books on my shelf . I still look back at them constantly . You need to know . You know because routing pro , you know , bgps , you know runs on TCP , you know .
Speaker 3It's one of those things where you have this stack and you really need to learn the fundamentals and that carries on into cloud . So if you think about cloud I mean when I started deploying connectivity to the cloud what do you think we're doing ? Like , okay , you have BGP , you have circuits , you have path prepending from A side and B side . You have all these things that you're still doing . There's another side of this . It's running these protocols and you have to know how failover and all these mechanics work , still , even in the cloud . So those skills , they are still relevant , but I think where you're , the sort of the job displacement is happening is more on the hardware end . I think a lot of it is transition to software and I want to send this back over to you , scott .
Speaker 4Yeah well , so you give me some great things to argue with you about . No , sorry , Friendly , friendly arguments .
Speaker 3I told Cable to bring the popcorn . Yeah , that's why we're here I'll get spicy .
Speaker 4Here we go . I think the one big item here that is kind of the definition of commoditization is where we are in the growth profile of building out the Internet .
Speaker 4You think in the 90s , right , and into the 2000s , even though we had the bubble , there was still a lot of infrastructure being built out . We couldn't keep up right infrastructure being built out . We couldn't keep up Right . And you know , some of you probably heard me talk about that cowboy mentality right , where didn't matter what you did , as long as you got it done . You know you didn't have to share documentation , you didn't have to create documentation . You know , if you love being the man , you know that was a great environment for you to to achieve in , but maybe not the best environment for a mature system .
Speaker 4Now , I'm not saying there's zero growth today , but it's not like it was in the 90s , into the aughts , and now we're looking at largely capacity upgrades of infrastructure that already exists , so there's not as much new stuff to build and it is limiting the hardware . There's price pressure on the hardware right , and I've seen it at the vendors I've worked for and I've seen it in the disaggregated model right , where now I can buy , you know , different packaging of switches and routers from Acton , from Edgecore , you know from other suppliers and I can pick an OS right , there's IP Infusion , there's DriveNets there there's there's IP infusion . There's drive nuts , there's Arcus , there's Vios and then there's micro tick and I don't completely understand micro tick . But there are all these other non mainstream options that it's great for competition , but the drives prices down and therefore it impacts the people who actually make those . You know , switches and routers and firewalls work . So that's , that's a another big factor I'd throw into what you laid out , william yeah , that's fair yeah , um , the 5g , 6g thing .
Speaker 4Wow , let's do another episode on that you know how .
Speaker 3You know what I mean , though that is so differentiated . Like I tried to do , I tried to get into that space a little bit . It is deep .
Speaker 4So it is , but it's a different set of technologies . It's not like we understand BGP . There are other people that understand the 5G air interface right and know what has to happen , you know , with signal propagation , and it looks like deep magic to those of us on the outside , but it's really just another bucket of technologies that can be learned . And I'll just say when I landed at Nokia , one of the coolest things about working there was access to the mobility portfolio and being able to learn in that space . I've been working my way into mobility stuff since my first mobile backhaul projects at Juniper as a tech engineer , and this is part of the always learning thing . Right , and I think this plays right into the topic here Mobility was not a core strength of Juniper as a vendor , but there were mobility solutions that they played a role in that gave enterprising young individuals the ability to learn if they are motivated .
Speaker 4Oh , mobile backhaul , what's that ? Okay , well , what's what's on that ? What is this ? What does the radio do ? What does the baseband unit do , etc . So finding things that you can at least get a finger in and maybe put a hand or dive in fully , you know , wherever you can , is a great way to acquire new skills and make yourself more valuable .
Speaker 2I want to touch on two things quickly . So , william , foundational networking knowledge , like you , more valuable . I want to touch on two things quickly . So , william , foundational networking knowledge . Like you said , if you want to come in somebody new , it'd be great if we had a vendor agnostic accepted training program , but it seems like the CCNA is the gold standard . Is that sound correct to you and you , scott ?
Speaker 3like when you , when you tell somebody what to study .
Speaker 4It's very practical .
Speaker 2Like it's most encompassing .
Speaker 3I never took the net plus , so I don't know what's in it , but I get the sense that the ccna covers more material and more deeply I don't know if it gets more into nuts and bolts , for sure and you have to actually configure things you have to do subnetting and comprehend like things that are really valuable , that are going to be with you no matter what vendor you use .
Speaker 2So and this and this will tie into that . Like Scott , you had said about the acceleration of change , you know called up to me and I think that's a really good point . And then somebody in the chat just said cloud AI , automation they all seem to happen all at once , like they all just hit us at once , right , so , and that's been so . That was a Zetharian , I think , in the chat and that's kind of how I felt too and I'll show you like I mean it's crazy , I won't do it , but I have a pile of books right here trying to consume , right , but I talked earlier about I kind of felt like some of my skills aged out . Oh , you got your pile , yeah , yeah .
Speaker 2So you know I was , I always wanted to get my CCMP . I never did , so I started working on that . So I have a 900-page Encore book that I'm halfway through . I'm working on coding because I refuse to code until I'm like , uh-oh , I better learn this stuff . So now I ran a Python script the other day . I have three different Python books here , one from Eric Cho , one from John Capobianco , one from Edelman's folks . My friend sent me an EVPNVX land book . Right , I got a Cisco PI ATS book I was reading about machine learning tonight at my daughter's gymnastics so like , let's say this , but , but . But that's the world we're in and it sounds schizophrenic when you say it out loud Like so , if you're new and you're coming in , get your CCNA .
Speaker 2Now , what I've been telling people is you might want to learn some Linux and some Python and some cloud as well . Now , that sounds like a lot to throw at somebody , because it took me a year and a half to go through the Cisco Netacad , fail the exam three times , finally pass the thing and then interview for six months for that first knock roll . And if you were to tell me then and , by the way , you're going to have to learn programming and DevOps and Git and AI and all the stuff we're telling people to learn . So that's kind of where I am and I would just like to touch on that somehow , if we can , whether you're new or whether you're a guy like me , who you call them the tradnet ops guys . Right , scott , that's right . Yeah , the old school guys who did the job . They were route switched , that was it . Well , here we are . Times are changing and our skillset needs to be updated . So what are those skills ? Can we talk about what you need today , either new or a trad net ops like me .
Speaker 4Can I , can I just
Adapting Skills for Changing Technology
Speaker 4pull you back to one thing . You said , you said you , I forget how you put it . Your skills went out . How did you forget how you put it ? Your skills went out ? How did you , how did you put ?
Speaker 2make the statement um I feel like I feel like my skills kind of aged out or got aged out .
Speaker 4That's what you're relevant yeah , yeah , and I would strongly encourage you to not think about it that way . Everything is additive and like , even if you don't ever have to teach somebody IPv4 , subnetting again , you know that's a , that's a foundational skill that you have and you'll be able to tie other new things to it . I don't know what those things are Right , but like I , I bounced around a lot in my career . There are jobs where I wish I had stayed in longer . I should have given things a chance longer . That being said , gave me a lot of exposure to a lot of different things , and I've you know , on one hand , the way our brains are wired . It wants to make connections , it wants to see patterns , but it's also really good at finding connections to help us cope , survive and thrive .
Speaker 2So , yeah , I don't I'm not trying to pull you down but I just that you're not aging out , you're just adding it's a good reframe , yeah , well , like people like william and my buddy tim mack , and like all these guys that and girls who pivoted to cloud and and abandon us networking people you want to know something funny about that .
Speaker 3so you you're talking about like AI and cloud sort of or automation and AI all these things hitting at once . And it's funny like if you can find an opportunity within a role like whatever you're doing where you can take one of these things , you can apply it to your job and add value . This is when it becomes very real , and this is exactly what happened with me in automation . So we were , I had written so anybody out there that ever had to do , you know , generate CSRs and do the whole cert install process with a CSS load balancer knows that this technology has come a long way .
Speaker 3That was one of the worst things I ever had to do in tech . It was awful every time , and so that motivated me at the time . I had to do so many of those early in my career that I was like there's got to be something I can do or else I'm going to get out of tech . It was like that miserable . I hated doing that Worse than like fast food . So that is what forced me to pick up Bash scripting it was actually a mix of Bash and Perl and even some NetSNMP for some things but bringing these together and writing some scripts to do that , and once I got it working and I actually had some help from a coworker at the time that helped me with a few things as well that is what got me zeroed in . I was like , wow , this made my quality of life so much better , and back then that was just one thing .
Speaker 3But nowadays there are so many opportunities where automation can and it doesn't . You don't have to be a software developer . I'm not a software developer , because I work with software developers that are top notch , like in the Silicon Valley space , and you see their code base and then you see what I've written and you're like , okay , you're comparing like apples to like you know , dirt pretty much . There's that much of a difference , so it's all in context . So finding something to apply , like where you can garner value from it , is one way . Like it's really hard to just go out and say I want to learn automation , I'm just going to go and make myself learn and I don't really have a real problem to apply this thing to . That's really hard , that's an uphill battle and I'm not discouraging people not to code because of that , but it's just . It's easier when , when you find a way you know to to apply it to real world things .
Speaker 4Okay , that was it , yeah and you know to take that , william . One of the ways to figure out what do I start with or what do I do next is to figure out okay , what can I focus on for a short period of time a relatively short period of time and get my first job with it right . So this is the new and you to start learning stuff from the book and on the job and also understand what the customers are dealing with . It's never fun and people always want to yell at somebody , but doing those things at the same time are super useful , and I didn't do this right away in my career , but I was a tech engineer for five years and nobody ever called me to thank me for keeping the internet up . Today , all you're hearing about is the problems . But you learn so much more when you see things break and then going and reading about the OSI model or just sitting in a class . Right , yeah , you could do troubleshooting labs in a class and that's helpful , but when you see how things break in the real world , you really get to understand . Okay , this is how things really work .
Speaker 4Somebody asked in the chat if Cisco is really the de facto certification engine today , and I would just say , from a practical perspective , there's a lot of deployed Cisco gear and if you're going to start somewhere , you're going to pick something . It's a , it's a , it's a reasonable place to start . I'll also plug . You know , the juniper cert program , the arista cert program . I know those fairly well . I don't know the nokia cert program like I should , having been an employee , though arista and juniper are doing really good things there . Um , but again , by the numbers , getting a CCNA is going to be the most recognizable and probably give you the biggest chance or that first cut of skills . Unless you know you're going into a Juniper shop or an Arista shop and then you could swap CCNA for JNCIA or the Arista L1 , for example . So be aware , tailor it to the environment you think you're going to be working in . Hey .
Speaker 2William , when you had to learn coding , you didn't freak out right Like was it intuitive to you what this was so long ago that network people didn't even .
Speaker 3it wasn't even in conversations . Like this was like when enterprises were still configuring like Linux servers .
Speaker 2Well , that's why I'm asking like you seem like an outlier , that you're just like oh yeah , I'm just going to figure out how to do some bash scripts , right it kind of goes even further than that .
Speaker 3So I had a major . So I guess maybe this is too much info for this podcast , but I had a major back surgery when I was very young like major . So my spine was so curved that if they wouldn't have operated it would
Navigating the Shifting IT Landscape
Speaker 3have been I wouldn't be able to do much now . So I have a pretty nice titanium rod in my back . So when I was recovering from this surgery it was really rough and I was basically stuck at home .
Speaker 3I couldn't do anything for months physical therapy and everything and I happened to come across a and this is like it was a lifesaver at the time , but it was a how to install Slackware magazine with like a bunch of floppies in it . I was like this is a cool science experiment . So I actually wiped out my parents I don't even know what version of Windows it was running but they went to the grocery store and they left me at home and I destroyed that machine . We never got Windows back on it . They were like , look , you just keep your thing over there , we'll go invest in a new computer . That's cool that you're doing something you know , like not playing video games , have fun .
Speaker 3So , yeah , I installed Slackware . I got it running . It was just a terminal , there was no GUI . And then I remember the first time , I remember where I was sitting , but I put like four or five commands in this file and ran it and it did these things and I thought for some reason at that time I was like , wow , that is really cool , this could be a powerful thing . I was in middle school .
Speaker 2Isn't it amazing that the formative experiences we have and how they shape our perception and , more powerfully than that , our narratives that we carry ? I'm comparing my story with coding to yours . I tried to be a computer science major in college because I love computers . I took stuff apart , right Like I had that curious tactile kind of thing , and they threw me in C++ and calculus and I got my ass handed to me , even with tutoring , and I'm like , well , I guess I'm not smart enough to do this . Now , why am I bringing that up Years later , working in production , being told I have to learn Python ? I had a very strong neural pathway built in my head and a story tied to it that I can't code , I'm not smart enough . This isn't for me .
Speaker 2And Scott reminded me earlier when he reframed like your skills aren't aging out , it's all additive . And then you had said something similar about like well , if you're going to get in cloud , you need foundational networking knowledge . So I just love how much . I don't know if psychological is the right word , but it's such an inside game , a lot of this stuff . Like you had a good experience being introduced to code . Great , I didn't right . But it just takes someone reframing it Like listen man , it's just additive . This isn't C++ , and you guys both know . Last week I stole code from a class I was taking that Dwan Lightfoot teaches and I was able to use a Python , a very short Python script , and NetMeco to log into a Cisco router . I was like huzzah , this is great .
Speaker 3So we're talking about subnet like core fundamental skills that I think we were talking about , the CCNA , and then we were talking about , okay , cloud and AI and automate all this stuff hit at once . Oh , it's all this new stuff to learn . But again , perspective . So I don't want to say I talk to network engineers every day , but I talk to a lot of folks from a lot of big companies and I get a picture into some common problems that network engineers have to deal with . And it's funny because one of the biggest , I'd say , pain in the neck problems is IP addressing in cloud .
Speaker 3You have all these networks that were built using the same slash , 20 .
Speaker 3And then it's like , okay , we need these to talk now , we need to talk to the data center , we need to do this and we need to do that .
Speaker 3And if there's job security out there and you're putting NATs everywhere , you're not going to have developers that are managing all these NATs and all this complex routing . And I mean that just goes to show you that if these cloud practitioners like towards the beginning , if they would have had a little , if they would have asked for help , but at that time they didn't need network engineering help oh , networking is going away . You don't need those skills . We're full stack developers , we know everything and we'll come to find out that . You know , with some of these bad experiences , you realize , okay , maybe I didn't know as much as I thought I knew in the cloud , and we need skilled people in storage . We need skilled people in networking . We need skilled people in security . You know we actually need those things because the alternate universe of if we don't have those things is we've built all this stuff and none of it can talk and we can't get anything to work , we can't get our applications to run and hey , that's a problem .
Speaker 2You're going to get me on a soapbox because we've we've got rid of so many network operators the past couple of years At least that's my perception with the layoff stuff . And then we're going to replace them with software to find this and this other overlay and this AI automation stuff , and like , hey , look out , you know , yeah , our solution , our software , our magical software that's going to manage all your stuff for you . Sure , it's expensive , but it's a heck of a lot cheaper than all those humans that you just got rid of . Like isn't that great . So , to your point , william , like when the cloud came by , oh , it's going to be easy to press a button . And then we come to find , well , we don't need as many people .
Speaker 2There's these two narratives with automation . I hear is you're going to free up your people to do more higher value work , right , well , okay , or you can do the work of 10 people with one person who's really good at these automation tools . And , similar to that cloud problem , they ran them with the IPs . I'm afraid we're going to have less knowledgeable networking people running bigger environments with this fancy tooling . And if all hell breaks loose or they find like , oh crap , we messed all the IP addresses , like there's not going to be enough people to fix all the networking crap that they screwed up by software defining , automating and AI-ing everything because they were going too fast and they were chasing the money and they didn't realize all these mistakes they're making along the way .
Speaker 2I'm off my soapbox now , but it's a parallel that I feel is like the same trend happening with going lean with people and maximizing . If you're a publicly traded company and you have to show profit every quarter forever , it's impossible , right ? I mean the whole system again , another soapbox . That isn't this show , but that is impossible if anybody has any sense of . I'm not an economist , so you know you're going to cut your people when you can and cook the books to make it look good until you can spin up the new thing . But I'm concerned that you know we're getting rid of network people and replacing them with software long term . That doesn't seem great to me , am I totally crazy ?
Speaker 4I don't think you're crazy . And there is that crowd or that persona , an IT leader , IT director , IT VP or CIO that says I'm sick and tired of having to have CCIEs to run my network , and that's a quote , and I've heard that .
Speaker 2So many times . But networks are more complex than they've ever been . That's true , right . I'm not arguing with you , but right that's the counter .
Speaker 4I'm not supporting , I'm reporting .
Speaker 2I'm with you , right , and I get their concern .
Speaker 4It's a thing . Right , it is a thing . But the other side of the coin that I'm hearing more and more of over the last few months is I can't hire networking people . I can't . I've had this open rec for a year and none of the new college grads want to do this . They all want to work with William on cloud stuff and sorry .
Speaker 2And I'm not saying that's not true , but , william , I don't know if you would rejoin yet but he has a buddy who's like a mid-level guy who is applying for a net ends job and there's like 750 applicants . So they say they can't get people . But then there's people out of work competing against hundreds , if not thousands , of people . So like I don't know if both are true , right , I don't know .
Speaker 3Actually from the hiring perspective . So when I was at my last role I worked for a Fortune 50 healthcare provider . I was building two teams at the time , so one of them was a cloud Like we were four clouds deep . At the time it was crazy . We had more cloud work than we knew what to do with and a lot of the problems we had on the infrastructure side pertained to networking . But then we were also doing some data center projects . So one thing I found really quick when the floodgates of resumes came in and I started originally hiring for the data center centric role , these resumes like every single one was inflated so bad .
Speaker 3And then when you start talk . It was like one in like 50 where you had like an honest resume and that is so time consuming because HR is fielding these things . They're looking and validating maybe that you have the certifications , graduated from where you said you did , and all this stuff . But if you're coming on and you're wanting to work in a data center and you say you have 10 years of experience and you have a CCNP and you can't walk me through , okay , like bits into this layer two , okay , now we're frames . Now , okay , now it went in this interface and this routing protocol , now we're packets , like if you don't know the , if you can't talk a story through a network device , but you have all this experience and all these certifications and all this stuff , like , okay , what happened ? Like these are that's about as basic as you can get . We're talking like VLANs and VRFs and you know pretty fundamental network engineering stuff . So that was one of the problems in hiring was resumes that were just fudged to . You know , mount Everest .
Speaker 2It was just crazy and that's a hard thing to work around because time yeah , and I didn't mean to cut Scott's legs out from under him , because I've heard the same thing that they can't find people . And there are college kids that don't want to be in networking , like , oh , I'm going to be in cyber , you're going to secure networks that you don't understand how they work , right , like , I guess , is that a thing ? I don't know , it doesn't sound like a thing , but I've heard the same thing , scott , so I'm not saying what you're saying isn't true . They can't find people . You , I know that there's plenty of people talking to college students and graduates who are like I don't want to go into networking , it sounds awful , I don't want to do that , it's not sexy , I want to be AI or dev .
Speaker 4We always chase the new squirrel right , the new shiny object . Where else did I want to take that ?
Speaker 3Sorry , I really derailed that .
Speaker 4No , it's okay .
Speaker 2No , it's a great conversation . I think software is taking our jobs . I think that publicly traded companies don't care because they have to extract every dollar they can and people are expensive . And that concerns me . And the only reason I say it out loud here is because we've been running a network engineering-focused podcast that tries not to lie to their audience , who seems very invested in what we're telling them . And if we come on here every week and say it's great and everything's wonderful and this is the best job in the world and not cover the entire , we have to objectively cover the news right and what's happening . I mean , I was joking with AJ the other day . I think we have one , two network engineers left on our show . Aj went to security and I went to a vendor and somebody's in SE .
Speaker 4Let me reframe that for you again . Oh good , so he went to Zscaler . He went to Zscaler .
Speaker 3Don't give him a free plug . Yeah no , we're talking reality here .
Speaker 4We're talking reality here , right , but he didn't lose his network engineering skills . He's reapplying them and he's layering new skills on top . And to park on the security field thing for a bit here Wow , what a forced ecosystem of innovation . If you want job security , security is a really good place to be . Or skilling up in security and like even just calling it security as one thing is not fair .
Speaker 4Um , there are so many different subcategories , like I was . I was fascinated , like when juniper bought net screen . You know , I was a carrier routing guy , right , and I knew bgp and I knew sonnet and ATM and I knew all these big iron things . But security guys know ports and protocols and they understand . Okay , this is what this application does on the network and it's a really interesting . So going into being a firewall person , right , you need that basic understanding of what's happening at the network layer , but you've got to be looking up at the applications and how they're using the network . So that's another valid place to skill up . That area sounds like they're always looking for people and I hear I've been involved in a couple of different state security-focused organizations where they're always working with colleges and universities to entice new grads into cyber , especially in the DC area . You know it's what everybody wants to do .
Speaker 3And if you know network engineering , I think that's almost a cheat code as far as like elevating yourself to security , because if you know how the nuts and bolts work I mean that was one of the biggest challenges in the past that I had working with like parallel security teams is we're just not talking the same language , like they're not . Some of the security teams I had to work with over the years were not technical at all . That means a lot ended up getting punted over and fell on the network engineering side and now you're seeing these two fields actually consolidate . There's a massive consolidation going on . So it's almost like a cheat code . If you've got network engineering under your belt and you do want to level up to a different area for job security , security is a great place to go .
Speaker 4So that cheat code would have helped me with your World of Warcraft
Transitioning to Cloud and Cybersecurity
Speaker 4reference earlier today that I did not get . Is that what you're telling me ? Sorry ? I can't help you there . Nope , I'm not that guy , I had to Google it .
Speaker 2So I guess to stay relevant right in the job market , you have to try to see around those corners , like where are things headed ? And I don't know if it's true , but I thought I had read that what's behind a lot of Cisco layoffs the past year is they're reinvesting in cyber and AI . So you reminded me , scott , with how security is a big thing . They've decided they're the two markets to go after . So I don't know again my cognitive bias , but like , oh well , if the biggest networking vendor with the biggest market share is making this huge shift to these two areas , maybe that's the target , maybe that's where I should be .
Speaker 2And when you guys were talking about like cyber and cloud , I just had a thought I never had before . It almost seems like networking it's not necessarily a place that people might stay right , like it's a jumping off point . You come in , you pay your dues , you learn the network and then you go to cloud or you go to cyber or you like . You know . I know that's a generalization , but I know that we're having a hard time keeping getting people in networking and keeping them in networking and if networking is a foundational skill for these sexier , higher paying jobs , it's going to be hard to retain talent , I think , long-term . I don't know if there's any truth to that , it's just a silly thought that popped into my brain .
Speaker 4I mean William . Speak to that because you've lived part of that life at a minimum .
Speaker 3Well , one piece of advice and just , you know , hindsight to 2020 . So when I look back and when I made the big pivot to cloud and I actually had a cloud role like cloud was like my sole responsibility . I'll tell you what . When they say , the grass is always greener on the other side , and then you get over there and you're like , oh boy . So one of the reasons I wanted to get out of network engineering was just a culmination of different .
Speaker 3You know , working in large enterprise is tough . When you see , like network budgets getting cut for other newer , fancier , shinier things and you have major problems , you don't have the budget to fix them . You can't get the change . You know , you can't get change management to work with you to really take certain things down long enough to make real changes and really go back and fix some of that technical debt that's kicking you in the butt . I just got so tired of that , along with the fighting fires that ensued from not being able to fix this stuff , that I was just like I , I can't , I need this pivot , because it was driving me crazy , if I'm honest I don't know that sounds so familiar publicly , but this is a true story .
Speaker 3Um and so like I get over to cloud , and cloud was in the beginning it was nice and shiny . A lot of times it was flying under the radar of change management , like hey , I don't know what we're doing .
Speaker 3You know , we're our own like we're Luxembourg , we're our own bosses here . Come on , and so is that sort of evolves , though in enterprises they realize , okay , this is a big part of our business we're actually using , you know , moving some of the crown jewels up here . Then they start bringing all the enterprise things and wrapping it up around the cloud and all the things you do in the cloud . You end up with a lot of the same challenges I was sort of outlining there on the network engineering side . It's a little bit different , but still the same thing . But another thing I wanted to say , and I don't want to change the subject too much but when we talk about networking being networking , it doesn't matter how high up the OSI model you go , all the way up to application networking , we're still TCPIP , BGP , we're tunneling the crap out of everything everywhere , at every level , reverse proxying things , like it's never going to go out of style . This is all networking .
Speaker 3But I'll tell you what . The thing that's changed is the tools you use to interact with it . So instead of hammering out those things on those you know , the Cisco , Juniper , Arista , CLIs you're basically defining your network configuration in a file . You're saying , hey , I want to commit that to a Git repo . Some sort of trigger happens that you set up a long time ago that you probably still don't understand , and that's going to go and do some things . It's going to have some automated checks involved and it's going to deploy some infrastructure . So it's really the tools and practices have changed more than the actual technology on the other end .
Speaker 2That's kind of my hot take for the infrastructure as code is something to add in there , right like that's yeah sure yeah terraform open tofu .
Speaker 4Yep , yeah , I would . I would say so if we , if we have that plate of what are four or five things that , if we want to survive in networking , we need to understand better . You know that tooling , github and python definitely fall in the category of how I interact with the equipment . Right , and I'm don't don't paint me as the you know , the CLI lover that I am . I just wanted to go into Will Ferrell on Saturday night live , but the CLI is still there and for all the threats of turning off the CLI that I started hearing 15 years ago at that company that starts with a J , to my knowledge it hasn't been turned off yet . But I have a broader variety of ways to interact with and instantiate services on switches , routers , firewalls , et cetera . So you're absolutely right , william . Right , there's more ways to interact with it .
Speaker 4The other two very practical things you know . To Andy , to your comment of you know being able to see around the corner this isn't looking around the corner . This is the train coming right at you , or both of us , all three of us , learning some Linux and learning a cloud platform like Linux , github , python and a cloud platform platform Once you have networking skills , whether you've gotten them from experience or you've done your CCNA and your CCNP or JNCIX . Those four areas and AWS is probably a really good place to start for a cloud platform , just like the CCNA is probably a really good place to start for an entry-level cert .
Speaker 3Yeah , and getting in there and doing it . So cloud training as far as I'm concerned , it's free . The free tiers I hosted a blog for a year using free tier stuff . You can do a lot with the free tiers , and especially Oracle . If you want to learn some OCI and you want to have a lot of infrastructure for free , oci has a very amazing free tier . So all the resources like instead of . You know , back when I was learning networking , I had to order all this stuff on eBay . Well , I actually had to get my mom to order all this stuff on the internet , get it delivered to the house and all this stuff and set it up , and sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't and wow , that was a time hog . But now you can start learning right now , where you mean you could spin up an aws account and deploy a vpc and a subnet and an ec2 instance while we're talking right now , in a few minutes .
Speaker 4You know it's all free , you know I think of um , who was the individual who presented at the kentucky nug that you and I were both at , and he did his yeah yeah , his automated his cloud lab because he got sick and tired of replacing hardware in his home networking lab .
Speaker 4That presentation is gold and I'm sure he would talk to people if they were interested in this is how I built it and that's a perfectly safe place to learn and touch all of the things that we were talking about . He did it on GCP , but I'm sure you could do something similar on AWS or OCI . So , yeah , stuff like that in a lab and in a free tier and not having to go on eBay and spend your last penny , you know you go buy more Marvel comic books . You don't have to spend it on servers . You know those are really good ways to kick tires in a very , very risk-free environment . A hundred percent .
Speaker 2William , when you were talking about pivoting from networking to cloud and how sexy cloud was and people left you alone , pivoting from networking to cloud , and how sexy cloud was and people left you alone , and cloud does seem to be . You know , a first-class citizen like you know where us network guys are , just you know slumming it . And for a second I thought , well , I wonder , you know , like I've always heard that , because infrastructure networking is a call center and not RevGen , that that's why we're so , you know , loathe , despised , kicked like dogs , right , but cloud seems to be treated differently , with more respect , with a little bit of you know , but cloud's also a cost center , right , like whether you're building on prem or in cloud , like why is ?
Speaker 4cloud treated .
Speaker 3Where's Corey Quinn Cloud is the biggest cost center . Cloud is the biggest cost center Right .
Speaker 2But it seems to be , and maybe it's just the speed at which you can deploy right and , like I mean , I get the benefits of cloud . I'm not having that conversation , but cloud just seems so revered by decision makers
Navigating the Reality of Cloud Adoption
Speaker 2and I always thought it was because we were a cost center , which is why infrastructure were such dogs . Always thought it was because we were a cost center , which is why infrastructure were such dogs . But if cloud costs , you know orders of magnitude more than on-prem , I guess it's just the speed at which you can deploy is why it's such a darling child . I don't know , I'm just trying to get my head around the difference between cloud and on-prem and their heads . But if they're both cost centers and if cloud's more expensive , that framing is wrong for me because it seems like going to cloud is better right , like networking or going to cloud . There's more jobs there . It's better , companies are investing in it , like that seems to be a good place to go yeah , a few things there .
Speaker 3Do you have something to say ?
Speaker 4scott , scott , I do , I do there's a , there's a , so I'll just I draw a parallel here . But it's back to growth , right , the internet had a lot of growth . A lot of people could get jobs , do well , and then it commoditized . We've seen 15 years of cloud growth and now we're just we're starting to hear the drumbeat of cloud repatriation . Right , and maybe it's not as cool as it was was , but it was still this thing that I had to have , you know , as a corporate manager , director , etc . And now ai is becoming that next thing . Yeah , so , and it'll be something else after ai , right ? Um , but that's , that's like that , I think . I think that's what drives a lot of the trends , and it's not all based on solid science , as it were . We're more impacted by emotion and marketing . That I think , we want to admit .
Speaker 3Oh , that is exactly where I was going , scott , emotion and marketing . Okay , let's go . I remember the first time I was in a meeting with a C I see something . I can't remember what the C title was , but there was a big mandate . It was hey , cloud computing is here , we're going to be out of our data centers inside of like 18 months . And of course , everybody that's technical in the room is like see all those zero downtime mainframes over there , rows and rows and rows of them . Yeah , we're just going to . Yeah , not how it works .
Speaker 3So there was such a push from the cloud providers . There was all these promises . There was this big . One of the big things was , oh , capex to OpEx . I don't know how many meetings I was in just talking about CapEx to OpEx . It's changing the world , it's going to make all the business stuff better , blah , blah , blah , blah , blah .
Speaker 3Well , it turns out accounting with a lot of these companies . That has been around for a really long time . You want to know what's coming . You want , like , you have this , it's just a different . It's not as easy as saying , ok , we're just going to go complete OpEx , we're going to do pay as you go , we're not going to sign an EDP for a long-term commit . We're just going to bite the bullet and just keep spending . Well then , your spending is out of control . It's up and down . Nothing's predictable .
Speaker 3There was this huge thing of like , okay , cloud is our way to get out of our own data centers . We're not going to have data centers anymore , we're not on premises , that's not going to be a thing anymore . And then , as you , as things get real and things only get real when you move that first application , that complicated application that has data spread out and you know , across multiple data centers , you have multiple stateful things in the way . You , you know you have all these different things that you don't know about . Oh , this needed this over here to talk and it had this over here . And oh , one of the people that wrote this part of the application isn't here anymore , which has been kind of so taking these giant monolithic applications and peeling them apart and making them , because if you do lift and shift , you've like it's like you've already lost . So you really want to use the cloud in the way the cloud was intended to be used , which is not lift and shift .
Speaker 4No , I want it to work just the way it worked in my private data center . And they don't understand that cloud is about operations as much as it is about technology .
Speaker 3How much money do you have ? If that is your goal , you better have a lot . So I guess what I'm saying is there was a lot of perception and just again like not living in reality . And then when you move that first application life , you know it becomes real . And then , okay , you try and move another application and one company I work for we had like over a thousand applications and it's like , okay , we like , okay , we're gonna , okay , we have this as expedited timeline to move all these applications to the cloud . And you know we could barely get one off the ground because of how complicated these applications that have been around forever . Um , it's not . It's not as simple as snapping your finger . You know there's no amount of professional services and all these agencies that you can bring in that's going to make that any better if you're going to take down that application and continually break stuff in order to make it move faster .
Speaker 3So , as these lessons start becoming real and real , and to Scott's whole theme of operations , operations is just the core for things running smoothly and you know it's just reality Reality hits you and it's like , okay , well , maybe we're not going to just move all of our eggs in the cloud basket . You know what . Maybe it's a good idea we have our data centers . Let's run the workloads that make sense in our data centers , that are cost-effective there , and then the things that work really well in cloud , that we understand , that we really repurpose , let's run those in cloud . It doesn't have to be all or nothing and it never I don't believe it ever will be because I believe AI and the hardware . I think there's going to be a resurgence in hardware in the data center to some capacity because it's going to be more cost effective to run certain AI workloads . Just a prediction . I could be completely wrong .
Speaker 4No , you're spot on . Jensen is making hardware cool again . Um , he really is . With that jacket , yeah , I want that jacket , but uh , yeah , the , the gpu now as the next fundamental unit of compute , right , that's , uh , that's going to be something to watch for the next few years at a minimum people laughed at me when I mined ethereum in my home mining rig .
Speaker 2And now look at it .
Speaker 3Who mines crypto ?
Speaker 2Well . I can't anymore , but I'm all about . Next , william , you're going to tell me AI is not going to solve all of our problems . That's what you're going to . Right Cloud didn't solve all our application problems . Next , you're going to go on the record as saying we're going to go on the record as saying we're going to get into all this , all the same issues with AI . That's where you're going , isn't it ?
Speaker 3How dare you A lot of new . Yeah , but we really didn't really touch that much on AI actually .
Speaker 2You know what we did , the community of service . Is anybody sick of hearing about AI ? I don't know . Well , I mean , we're at the hour I was going to sum up , but if listen , we can do whatever the hell we want . If we want to touch on AI and then wrap it up , we can . I don't have much to say about it .
Navigating Network Engineering and AI
Speaker 4I'm just reading a machine learning book , trying to get my head around what the hell's going on . It's all about getting through the hype right now , you know , and I feel like in tech , but in networking in particular , we're really susceptible to these . Here's the message about the new thing , and the new thing is it and it happened with SDN it's happened with things before SDN .
Speaker 2Can you define who we is , Because I think it's people who don't manage networks right .
Speaker 4I think it's a slider bar , but I think it's part of like we've been beaten into submission on it and I think there's a marketing motion that , because it's so hard to get ears and eyeballs on messages , there's this pressure for marketing to say and do whatever they can and I noticed I didn't say reasonably can whatever they can to get attention .
Speaker 4And then once they get attention , we can work the truth in there somewhere . I feel like it's worse than it's ever been in my career and I think that's very fertile ground for lots of hype around AI . I think , because of where we are over the past 30 years , we're now ready to and we're tired , we're exhausted and we just , like you know , we either believe it or we don't pay any attention to it . That's something I think vigilance we all really need to be hyper , hyper vigilant about . It's like okay , I hear this message , I've listened to this podcast , what's really happening here ? And it might not be an easy answer , right , it's going to take some digging for us and watching you know what happens in the next nine months , 12 months , et cetera .
Speaker 2It's probably just another tool right . There's a ton of hype , we don't know where it's going to go . So you know I've played around with chat GPT a bit . But the coolest like networking centric thing I did recently was I spun up a couple of SR Linux nodes in Docker with Container Lab . I'm throwing around words to sound smart and show that I've been studying , but then I installed their SR Linux GPT and this was huge , because I grab a token from ChatGPT , throw it in there , give them five bucks for the API calls and then I can just talk to the device in everyday language .
Speaker 2And we all know I mean , if you come up in Cisco and then you have to go to another vendor with different syntax , that's the friction . It's like oh my God , what is this and how do I do the thing . But I could talk to it and I said ask AI in the prompt in the damn CLI , how do I configure two IP addresses on two interfaces ? How do I configure BGP to neighbor up and how do I advertise loopbacks across ? And just what I said to you and it gave me everything I needed .
Speaker 2To me that was like I don't know if a watershed moment's the right term , but like , oh my God , I am talking to a device via the CLI in natural language and it's giving me the exact syntax commands I need , which is the job . Like , hey guys , we're going to this other vendor , learn the crap , oh God . And then you get a documentation . And every vendor documentation is a nightmare , right , but I can talk to it and it gives me what I need , like holy crap , even if it's not perfect , if it's close . So I got really excited when I did that . But again , there's hallucinations and a lot of hype and all that stuff .
Speaker 4But I think that's probably the number one most practical thing right now for network engineering . Natural language processing and you and I have seen it in other places too right , we saw it at the Nokia Data Center rollout day that we did for Tech Field Day , I saw it at Meter and this is becoming very mature and advanced very quickly . And the being able to pivot into other language support . You know , think about the ease for product owners right when I need to do other regionalization , for you know other languages , so I think this is one real area that's going to get interesting .
Speaker 2And we're both former Juniper people . I remember seeing a missed demo where they said in natural language show me all the users having a bad wireless experience right now . Like what ? And then it pulled it up and that's you know . I didn't get much further in that demo but like oh my God , you're talking to your infrastructure and it's giving you meaningful information . That's pretty amazing to me .
Speaker 3I think one interesting thing to watch out for is following the money , because one thing that you notice right now is if you look at big enterprises , what are they buying ? As far as AI is concerned , well , there hasn't been that moment of okay , this is a product that's actually an AI product . It's not an existing product on the market . It's just throwing , you know , machine learning or something on top of it and making that part of the product portfolio . But if you look at the outcropping of new startups like I try to keep track of all the startups , just to kind of Because if you look at the startups that are coming up , these AI startups that are getting the big checks from all the you know , the deep-pocked folks out on the West Coast seeing some of them the problem is like AI startups can die really quick because they go through and just obliterate their you know their burn rates just so high .
Speaker 3Sure , you know , because it's so much compute , you know it's so so much intensive resources to run , to test and to build , so things fizzle out pretty quick . But the ones that are actually generating value , that are going to eventually become the products that enterprises are going to buy to do really tailored or specific things . I think is an interesting thing to just watch out for , because really we want to know where is the value proposition for a big company . Is it just going to continue to be these existing products that are layering on ? Okay , it's a feature . Ai really is a feature , it's not a product . How is that going to shape up over the next five years ?
Speaker 4Well , and to the example Andy cited with Mist right , they weren't selling AI , they were making a better Wi-Fi management system , right , and so you could call it a feature , or you can call it just another set of computational techniques that I have available to me to make my product better , faster , stronger , and I think that's probably the second . I think we're going to see it embedded more and more in products just as a feature enabler , and we're not even going to know . It's AI or that's using an LLM or a small language model to do X or Y , but developers are going to be . It's AI , you know , or that's using an LLM or a small language model to do X or Y , but developers are going to be able to make great use of it . To you know , do better things faster .
Speaker 3Yeah , the small , you know , the small language models are going to be huge because it's a specific set of data , it's not a broad set of data . The training game changes and it's cheaper , and you know , the list goes on . That's going to be a huge part of the future .
Speaker 2All right , guys , this has been a fantastic show . I could stay on with you all night . I learned so much I got a couple things that I just circled here for key takeaways . I really liked , scott , what you said about things being additive , and you apply that to a lot of different things , right . New skills that we're learning are additive to networking . Even where we ended just now with the AI conversation , ai might be additive to other products that are there , that just make them a little more usable . It's a different interface , right . So I really like how you said .
Speaker 2It's really important , I guess , how we frame things in our perceptions and how we talk to ourselves and me saying I'm a network dinosaur because I don't know all the hotness Well , no . Talk to ourselves and me saying I'm a network dinosaur because I don't know all the hotness Well no , you just have to add on to that . And networking is always there . If you're going to pivot to cloud or cyber , you need a network foundation . William , you said something about making sure you're adding value , which I think is a really smart thing . You got into automation to add value to your company . That's always going to be a good thing , especially if you're a call center , like , oh , he's doing extra things and this is helping us , like that's really smart , I really like that . And then I really like what Scott said about like go where the growth is . Right . It was the internet , it was and might be cloud and maybe it's AI now , but we're having these conversations about you're a network person , you're trying to stay employed . You're trying to stay employed . You're trying to see what to do next . You can add on to your skills , which never ends , right . Networking is always changing and tech is always changing . And if you can try to stay where the growth is and add some value while you're there , I think that that's really smart .
Speaker 2You added infrastructure as code , which I think is a good call out right , and this list never ends GitHub , infrastructure as code , python right , like Terraform . I mean that's to me . I get all nuts and freak out . I'm like it's too much , I can't do any of it . But just pick one right , like automation's important . So recently I've picked Python and that's what I'm going to do and I'm starting to make progress , because if I , I do nothing . So maybe just pick one and get a small win .
Speaker 1And how deep do you ?
Speaker 2have to go right . Yeah , like you said , you don't have to be a developer . But if I can look at a Python script and kind of know what it's doing and grab code to do things , maybe that's enough . Right , like I don't need to be a full stack developer as a network person . Right , like , if I'm going to get into cloud ? I mean , I've seen Terraform , it's not terrible . Infrastructure's code's kind of cool . You know it's not that foreign from what you're doing in Notepad and CLI . So I think there's a lot of we can transfer a lot of these things and they're all very relevant to what we're doing . So thank you guys for joining . I really appreciate it .
Speaker 2You can find all of stuff network engineering at our link tree , link tree for slash art of net eng , something I always try to call out as our community . There . It's a discord server called . It's all about the journey . Right now we're running a CCMP study group , running a CCNA study group . There's new people coming in . There's triple CCIEs who are in there helping . We recently did wireless chapters in CCMP and Bart Castle from CBT Nuggets came in and spent like an hour and a half teaching us wireless like for free people . So that's awesome . Yeah , we can continue to have these conversations . So if you're looking for a community to join , if you're looking for support , go to linktreecom . Forward , slash artineteng , click the all . It's all about the journey link , as always . Thank you so much for joining . It's been a great conversation and we'll see you next time on the Art of Network Engineering podcast . Hey everyone .
Speaker 1This 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 NetEng , that's Art of N-E-T-E-N-G . You can also find us on the web at artofnetworkengineeringcom , 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 . We'll see you next time .
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