The Daily Network Monitor

I spent some time in flow state yesterday at work.  That’s rare for me, unfortunately.  The life of a middle manager can be full of interruptions and meetings and crises, with precious few opportunities to buckle down and get some honest work done.  I’m sure you can relate, whatever your job might be.

For those who don’t know, flow state is “…the mental state of operation in which the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing, characterized by a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity.” [wikipedia]  It’s hard to explain, but when you’re in it, you don’t really feel the passage of time, you don’t get tired or bored, and you crank out lots of work, usually very good work.  Being able to get into flow at will is something to aspire to, something great artists and athletes can do.

What’s interesting about this - at least it’s interesting to me - is that I got into flow doing something that’s not usually part of my job.  I was setting up the next incarnation of The Daily Network Monitor Blog in WordPress.  I am by no means a codemonkey, but I was up to my elbows in PHP and CSS and RSS, and I was seriously into it and suddenly it was dark when I looked up from my computer.  I’m not going to pretend to have a hidden talent for programming, but I think I did pretty well.  You can judge for yourself when the new site goes live.

Until then, I hope you all step away from the reader and find a project that needs doing that you can dive into and achieve some flow.  Happy new year.

If your wondering why confusion is mutating from one area of the network to the next, sit down with a large cup of coffee and read a weeks worth of hypothesis by varying authors regarding the look of converging networks and the resulting change in the network administrators’ role.

Last night I read the follow-up posting from a GigaOM article debating the merits of having a network engineer/administrator on the staff of a Web 2.0 company. The post’s author, Allan Leinwand, says a Web 2.0er recently told him that connecting to the Internet was like connecting to the electrical grid - you don’t need an electrical engineering degree for the latter and you don’t need a network engineer for the former.

I call this absolute nonsense and commend the Network World online staff for correctly pointing out, “the very servers that you read NW blogs on are at a co-location facility. Had we just allowed the third party to manage our systems, we may not have discovered a peering issue that was causing a decrease in site performance. Maybe these Web 2.0ers need to think a little more deeply about the plumbing side of the Web instead of just trying to impress their peers with the latest AJAX script.”

The world of Web 2.0 is exciting but it’s my strong opinion that it provides new challenges and opportunities for the network administrator and not the elimination of his or her job. The comparison of Web 2.0 to an electrical grid is tactically accurate but does not illustrate the enormous complexity that Web 2.0 provide – after all, I can’t recall another technology initiative that promised every device in the network connectivity.

I think we better hold on to the network administrators.

Making Your Pipe Greener

Your reaction to this post may vary depending on your ‘green’ view. I am not a ‘green’ fanatic by any means but I actively try to do my part to keep the place we call home (earth) safe for the next generation. Bombarded daily by environmental commercials, I am also afraid of leasing penalties – after all, I am constantly reminded that I did not inherit this home from my parents and grandparents as I had been accustomed to thinking but rather I am leasing it from my son and the rest of his generation. Having seen his 2-year-old temper explode already, I am sure he would penalize me immediately if he found my behavior degraded his place of habitation in any way.

Earlier this week, the IEEE introduced a new initiative designed to make idle or underutilized Ethernet connections more energy efficient, which could mean huge electrical cost savings for large enterprises. The trick: finding a way to seamlessly throttle between 10Mbps and 10Gbps.

Per their announcement, “The standards outfit recently formed an Energy Efficient Ethernet (EEE) study group to explore how to do this. The idea is to save power in PCs and laptops (most of which ship with GigE cards now) when LAN links are idle, or not utilizing full bandwidth. Researchers estimate that U.S. companies could collectively save $450 million a year in power costs by using such a technology.”

(more…)