Network-Design

Industry & Events

One Throat to Choke, or Any Silicon You Want: Cisco at NFD40

Cisco showed up to NFD40 selling two different pitches in the same session, and nobody on stage reconciled them.

2026.04.22 · 6 min
Industry & Events

Nokia at NFD40: Networking in the AI Era

I’ve been building networks for nearly thirty years. I understand leaf-spine fabrics, BGP design, VRF isolation, ECMP, and congestion management.

2026.04.15 · 6 min
Design & Architecture

The complexity required for robustness, often goes against robustness

In the past few months we have seen major outages from United Airlines, the NYSE, and the Wall Street Journal.

2016.04.14 · 3 min
Design & Architecture

Network Design — Keeping it simple

Since the dawn of time people have skirted best practice and banged together networks, putting the proverbial square peg in the esoteric round hole.

2014.10.13 · 3 min
Switching

Cisco Nexus 2000: A Love/Hate Relationship

My feelings towards the Nexus 2000 Fabric Extender (FEX) are hardly a secret.

2012.06.21 · 4 min
Routing

BGP Essentials – The Art of Path Manipulation

Most enterprise networks use BGP to peer with their Internet Service Providers if they want to be multi-homed.

2011.02.28 · 4 min
Routing

Using /31 subnets for point-to-point interfaces

Recently a “colleague”, I use that term very loosely here, was reviewing my recommendations for changes on his network.

2010.03.28 · 2 min