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Episode 8 - Garrick Sturgill
For Today's show Garrick Sturgill will be our guest. Garrick is senior Director at IsoFusion which, if you haven’t heard of it, is a colocation, cloud and networking company in the Pacific Northwest. He works in strategy and planning for network buildouts which include last mile fiber to the home which is a business that can use all the competition it can get in my opinion so I’m glad to see them moving into that market. Our conversation goes all over the place from the beginnings of the internet and Arpanet through Garrick’s work in the iconic Westin building in Seattle all the way up to the current bleeding edge of networking and low earth orbit satellites.
Our sponsor this week is Green Lane Design. Green Lane has been designing, engineering and building critial facilities for over ten years including major enterprise customers as well as colocation facilities. GLD has designed and developed an integrated stack of design disciplines. If you would be interested in a free assessment go to http://www.greenlanedesign.com/contact/ and mention the podcast.
Our music is algorithmically generated by Jukedeck. Create your own at http://jukedeck.com. Try it out. It's free.
Partial Transcript:
DF:
welcome everybody to the good data
podcast we have a great guest for you
today Garrick Sturgill will be on the
show Garrick is senior director at ISO
fusion which if you haven't heard of it
is a colocation cloud and networking
company in the Pacific Northwest
he works in strategy and planning for
network build-outs which includes
last-mile fiber-to-the-home which is a
business that we can use a lot more
competition and in my opinion so I'm
glad to see them moving into that market
our conversation goes all over the place
from the beginnings of the internet and
ARPANET through Garrick's work in the
iconic Western building in Seattle all
the way up to the current bleeding edge
of networking and low Earth orbit
satellites. Garrick packs a huge amount
of knowledge into a very approachable
package and I was so happy to have him
on the show let's go.
[Music]
DF:
Garrick thank you for coming on the
program.
GS
For sure
DF:
So I really wanted to
talk to you because here's someone who
is steeped in every level of Internet
history in that you know you've been
involved in the Western building and and
building up some of the backbone of
infrastructure and then moving on to
data center operations and things like
that so I feel like you've touched every
part of the stack and that's what I'm
interested in so I really appreciate
being able to talk to you
GS:
just don't ask
me any VMWare questions
DF:
That's fine yeah. It's not really my forte
either so I'd just
like to start at your background so what
was your first job in networking when
you first started
GS:
Oh my first job in networking
well my first like official job was
probably working for my parents my
parents owned a were actually we're a
part owner of a computer store up in
Seattle called Ballard computers and
they sold pcs not necessarily you know
no Macs well I shouldn't say that no they
they sold I believe they sold Mac but also
we have like a pseudo ragtag enterprise
division too where you go and you do you
do installs my stepdad at the time
actually ran the service department for
the company so clients would come in and
and then naturally they would need other
stuff done in their offices and he would
send me out on these like calls I mean I
didn't go to school for for this but
basically just being kind of tossed out
into the world like hey go fix this
DF:
it's usually the best way to learn really is
you know it's like oh I don't really
know what I'm doing but uh I'm gonna
figure everything out and then it'll all
kind of come into place
GS:
I think yeah you
know and in those offices at the time
you know it wasn't mission-critical
you know what I mean like like
the network's inside of an office were
like you know I mean it was like 10baseT
I mean it was nothing
people had email but it was still kind
of like a novelty.
people didn't really companies use it
internally but people weren't sending
each other like business emails right it
least in my experience I mean I wasn't
like super deep rooted into it at that
point I was more of a inquisitive person
funding the wanting to learn and know
exactly you know what was going over for
the wires you know I don't really care
about software back then I'm more I was
more into fiber optics and and cat5 at
that point.
DF:
So then you got somehow you you get
connected to the Westin building and
can you just first of all say what the
Westin building is and just
describe it quickly
GS:
Yeah sure the Westin building is is the
interconnection point up here in the
northwest it's where all the carriers
bring in terrestrial fiber into the meet
new room and then there's a couple
there's one Pacific cable that comes
into the building and then there's a
couple skinny routes which are like
regional undersea fiber cable not really
under seat but it runs in Puget Sound
and there's a few data centers in there
the current cup
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By Drew Farnsworth
4
22 ratings
For Today's show Garrick Sturgill will be our guest. Garrick is senior Director at IsoFusion which, if you haven’t heard of it, is a colocation, cloud and networking company in the Pacific Northwest. He works in strategy and planning for network buildouts which include last mile fiber to the home which is a business that can use all the competition it can get in my opinion so I’m glad to see them moving into that market. Our conversation goes all over the place from the beginnings of the internet and Arpanet through Garrick’s work in the iconic Westin building in Seattle all the way up to the current bleeding edge of networking and low earth orbit satellites.
Our sponsor this week is Green Lane Design. Green Lane has been designing, engineering and building critial facilities for over ten years including major enterprise customers as well as colocation facilities. GLD has designed and developed an integrated stack of design disciplines. If you would be interested in a free assessment go to http://www.greenlanedesign.com/contact/ and mention the podcast.
Our music is algorithmically generated by Jukedeck. Create your own at http://jukedeck.com. Try it out. It's free.
Partial Transcript:
DF:
welcome everybody to the good data
podcast we have a great guest for you
today Garrick Sturgill will be on the
show Garrick is senior director at ISO
fusion which if you haven't heard of it
is a colocation cloud and networking
company in the Pacific Northwest
he works in strategy and planning for
network build-outs which includes
last-mile fiber-to-the-home which is a
business that we can use a lot more
competition and in my opinion so I'm
glad to see them moving into that market
our conversation goes all over the place
from the beginnings of the internet and
ARPANET through Garrick's work in the
iconic Western building in Seattle all
the way up to the current bleeding edge
of networking and low Earth orbit
satellites. Garrick packs a huge amount
of knowledge into a very approachable
package and I was so happy to have him
on the show let's go.
[Music]
DF:
Garrick thank you for coming on the
program.
GS
For sure
DF:
So I really wanted to
talk to you because here's someone who
is steeped in every level of Internet
history in that you know you've been
involved in the Western building and and
building up some of the backbone of
infrastructure and then moving on to
data center operations and things like
that so I feel like you've touched every
part of the stack and that's what I'm
interested in so I really appreciate
being able to talk to you
GS:
just don't ask
me any VMWare questions
DF:
That's fine yeah. It's not really my forte
either so I'd just
like to start at your background so what
was your first job in networking when
you first started
GS:
Oh my first job in networking
well my first like official job was
probably working for my parents my
parents owned a were actually we're a
part owner of a computer store up in
Seattle called Ballard computers and
they sold pcs not necessarily you know
no Macs well I shouldn't say that no they
they sold I believe they sold Mac but also
we have like a pseudo ragtag enterprise
division too where you go and you do you
do installs my stepdad at the time
actually ran the service department for
the company so clients would come in and
and then naturally they would need other
stuff done in their offices and he would
send me out on these like calls I mean I
didn't go to school for for this but
basically just being kind of tossed out
into the world like hey go fix this
DF:
it's usually the best way to learn really is
you know it's like oh I don't really
know what I'm doing but uh I'm gonna
figure everything out and then it'll all
kind of come into place
GS:
I think yeah you
know and in those offices at the time
you know it wasn't mission-critical
you know what I mean like like
the network's inside of an office were
like you know I mean it was like 10baseT
I mean it was nothing
people had email but it was still kind
of like a novelty.
people didn't really companies use it
internally but people weren't sending
each other like business emails right it
least in my experience I mean I wasn't
like super deep rooted into it at that
point I was more of a inquisitive person
funding the wanting to learn and know
exactly you know what was going over for
the wires you know I don't really care
about software back then I'm more I was
more into fiber optics and and cat5 at
that point.
DF:
So then you got somehow you you get
connected to the Westin building and
can you just first of all say what the
Westin building is and just
describe it quickly
GS:
Yeah sure the Westin building is is the
interconnection point up here in the
northwest it's where all the carriers
bring in terrestrial fiber into the meet
new room and then there's a couple
there's one Pacific cable that comes
into the building and then there's a
couple skinny routes which are like
regional undersea fiber cable not really
under seat but it runs in Puget Sound
and there's a few data centers in there
the current cup