The Hedge

Addiction and addiction recovery are not a “normal” Hedge topic, but addiction afflicts many people in Information Technology. We’re all “hard driven” types, who feel failure keenly, and we tend to spend more time working than is probably healthy for us. Brett Lovins has been through addiction and recovery, and joins Tom Ammon, Russ White, and Eyvonne Sharp to talk about this high impact topic.

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While power is crucial for data centers, it’s also something network engineers don’t talk about a lot. In this episode of the Hedge, Sarah Martin from HED Design joins us to talk about the history, current state, and future of power in data centers.

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What impact would Electromagnetic Pulses (EMP) from a large-scale sunspot have in the modern world? One this episode of the Hedge, Ulrich Speidel and Jaap Akkerhuis join George Michaelson and Russ White to discuss space weather and its impact on communication systems. Note this is a joint episode with Ping, APNIC’s podcast. Because this is a joint recording, the format is a little different than normal.

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When network engineers think of a data center, we think of fabrics and routers and switches. There is a lot more to a data center, though—there is power, building construction, environmentals, and a lot of others. What possible jobs are out there in the data center space for people who want to work in IT, but don’t either want to code or build networks? Carrie Goetz, author of Jumpstart Your Career in Data Centers joins Tom Ammon and Russ White to tell us about a few, and about the importance of other careers in the data center.

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In case you didn’t see it I’m uploading the rough “machine generated” transcript of each episode about a week after the episode airs. It takes a little time for the transcription to be created, and then for me to log back in and upload the file.

It’s the last show of the month, which means it is time for a roundtable! Today we are discussing three news stories, including Amazon’s Sidewalk Labs, a court case in California involving Cisco and the Great Firewall of China, and yet another data breach.

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Buffer bloat causes permanent delay at multiple points along the path between a server and client—but it is hard to measure and resolve. Bjørn Teigen joins Tom and Russ on this episode of the Hedge to discuss the problem, solutions based in routers, and research into how to solve the problem at the host. You can find Bjørn’s recent paper in this area here, and he blogs here.

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The idea of a root of trust is somewhat foreign to network engineers—what is it, and why would it be important? Michael and Marcus from Hedgehog join Tom Ammon and Russ White to discuss how hardware roots of trust work, what problems they are designed to solve for network hardware, and the current state of this technology.

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rough transcript will be supplied in a few days

Computers only have a history stretching back some 60 or 70 years—and yet much of that history has already been lost in this mist of time. Are we focusing so deeply on the future that we have forgotten our past? What might we learn from the past, even the recent past, and how does forgetting our past impact the future. Federico Lucifredi joins Tom Ammon and Russ White to discuss some of his projects finding, repairing, and operating old personal computers.

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If you are interested in retrocomputing, you might want to start with this Stack Exchange, the Retrocomputing Forum, this Reddit forum.

It’s roundtable time at the Hedge! This month, Tom, Eyvonne, and Russ kick off the conversation talking about the value (and some dangers) of open source software. Fake Agile is up next—what does it really mean to be agile, and can organizations use agile tools without being truly agile? Finally, cloud computing, vendors, and skills come to the fore.

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This show was produced by Ashlyn Boyd

What’s next for network engineering? While we normally think of answers to this question in terms of technology, Mike Bushong joins this episode of the Hedge to argue the future is in operations—and operational excellence. Join Mike, Tom, and Russ as we discuss how the importance of operating a network is impacting the design of hardware, software, and networks.

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