Pascal Charest - blog d’un consultant en logiciel libre

OpenLetter from one computer guy to another. If your from ISF, or DigitalDays, please disregard.

Today’s peoples think they know computer networking when they can configure an IPv4 software firewall on a full layer 2 network. This is the plague of the industry : myriad of self-taught semi-genius with ego the size of the world. I’m one of them… but only with 2/3 of those aspects, chose from the list ;-).

I’ve been doing some research about Zeroconf [Apple's implementation is distributed under the name Bonjour, successor of RendezVous], multicast DNS, DNS Service Discovery… and most of the resources are merely re-hashed version of the same page. When I say “re-hashed”, I’m crudely understating: the wording is the same… mere copies. Yet there seem to be thousand of people waving the flag of “MultiCasting Expert”.

Lets speak of other “expert”. Who really knows what is IGMP [_wp], ASN [_wp] , BGP [_wp] or even a Looking Glass [_wp]? Jeez, it’s pathetic. Or maybe i’ve been interested in WAN technologies and other people were more centered on a local system administrator point-of-view? That must be it, but i’ve been a member of NANOG for so long that their never-ending soul searching isn’t fun anymore and to most of today’s “computer operator”, Internet is all about domain name, http, [maybe ssh], firewall and ipv4.

Forget WAN, lets speak LAN. Who heard of ndb storage engine [_wp] ? federated storage engine [_wp]? Who can, at least, tell me which software they are used in? How is a grey list really working? What state can a network connection be, from iptables point of view? heard of ipchains? What is QOS… not the canned answer, a factual use in your network. Answer that question in front of your boss… I want to know the answer to the “why aren’t we using it?” that will follow.

Ok, you haven’t been playing on technical aspect of IT, lately. What about your view on Digital Right Management? Net Neutrality? [Can you at least explain what the subject is?]

Teaching in the computer industry now seem more of a stochastic process where you are happy if you can fumble on the answer before anyone else. This post is a simple statement of my opinion that we don’t need more “firewall guy”… if you like computers, please, at the very least, learn how it really work.