It’s time again for Tom, Eyvonne, and Russ to talk about current articles they’ve run across in their day-to-day reading. This time we talk about WiFi in the home, how often users think a global problem is really local, and why providers have a hard time supporting individual homes and businesses. The second topic is one no one really cares about … apathy. What causes apathy? How can we combat it? Join us for this episode of the Hedge … if you can bring yourself to care!

We all know netops, NRE, and devops can increase productivity, increase Mean Time Between Mistakes (MTBM), and decrease MTTR–but how do we deploy and use these tools? We often think of the technical hurdles you face in their deployment, but most of the blockers are actually cultural. Chris Grundemann, Eyvonne, Russ, and Tom discuss the cultural issues with deploying netops on this episode of the Hedge.

What does it mean to be a network engineer in today’s world of information technology? Phil Gervasi joins Tom and Russ to discuss the ins and outs of network engineering, and what it’s really like to be in this small corner of information technology today.

As we reach the end of what has been a hard two-year stretch for what seems like the entire world, Ethan Banks joins Tom, Eyvonne, and Russ to talk about the importance of taking care of yourself. In the midst of radical changes, you can apply self-discipline to make your little part of the world a better place by keeping yourself sane, fit, and well-rested.

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Tom, Eyvonne, and Russ hang out at the hedge on this episode. The topics of discussion include our perception of security—does the way IT professionals treat security and privacy helpful for those who aren’t involved in the IT world? Do we discourage users from taking security seriously by making it so complex and hard to use? Our second topic is whether multicloud is being oversold for the average network operator.

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Decision making, especially in large organizations, fails in many interesting ways. Understanding these failure modes can help us cope with seemingly difficult situations, and learn how to make decisions better. On this episode of the Hedge, Federico Lucifredi, Ethan Banks, and Russ White discuss Federico’s thoughts on developing a taxonomy of indecision. You can find his presentation on this topic here.

Crossing from the domain of test pilots to the domain of network engineering might seem like a large leap indeed—but user interfaces and their tradeoffs are common across physical and virtual spaces. Brian Keys, Eyvonne Sharp, Tom Ammon, and Russ White as we start with user interfaces and move into a wider discussion around attitudes and beliefs in the network engineering world.

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Complaining about how slow the IETF is, or how single vendors dominate the standards process, is almost a by-game in the world of network engineering going back to the very beginning. It is one thing to complain; it is another to understand the structure of the problem and make practical suggestions about how to fix it. Join us at the Hedge as Andrew Alston, Tom Ammon, and Russ White reveal some of the issues, and brainstorm how to fix them.

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CHINOG is a regional network operators group that meets in Chicago once a year. For this episode of the Hedge, Jason Gooley joins us to talk about the origins of CHINOG, the challenges involved in running a small conference, some tips for those who would like to start a conference of this kind, and thoughts on the importance of community in the network engineering world.

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In this episode of the Hedge, Tom Ammon and Russ White are joined by Ivan Pepelnjak of ipSpace.net to talk about being old, knowing about how things are going to break before they do, and being negative. Along the way, we discuss the IETF, open source, and many other aspects of the world of network engineering.

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