[NNagain] RFC: Public Communications on Tech Infrastructure

[David Bray, PhD]

Agree 100% Bob, often the best sign of a job well done is no one noticed -
and for most things digital this is the case (because when IT works, it’s
near-invisible and taken for granted).

However as Nathan pointed out - this is less about being noticed and more
making sure that non-techies, when they think something isn’t right, can
appreciate the *broader nuances* to include the realpolitik of how bad
ransomware/cyberattacks are getting (sadly, increasingly a question of when
not if this will happen to an organization) as well as the challenges of
legacy systems and legacy data while the news cycle is fixated on
generative AI :-)

That said, I think networks and IT also are still working to evolve from
what was (for commercial entities at least) mostly finance support role in
the mainframe days, to operations support, to productivity, to increasingly
how an organization operates as a whole. Meanwhile most Boards or oversight
groups for organizations aren’t deep in networks, tech, and IT which
creates challenges within and across organizations too.


On Wed, Oct 25, 2023 at 13:44 rjmcmahon <rjmcmahon at rjmcmahon.com> wrote:

> I was an intramural ref in college. The best compliment I would get was,
> "You ref'd our championship game? I didn't notice." It indicates that
> others could play their game and the ref called a good game. Being
> noticed as a ref likely means you're getting in the way of the game.
>
> I think much of life is this way. Being noticed is much less important
> than enabling others to fulfill their potential & talents without them
> having to deal with basics like reliable communications and
> infrastructure. That just seems fundamental to me and being part of
> helping with that is enough.
>
> Just my $0.02,
> Bob
> > Bravo Nathan and very well said - thank you for sharing this,
> > especially:
> >
> >>> the incredible accomplishments of network engineers are totally
> > unacknowledged and misunderstood
> >
> > I concur that technical topics don't get a lot of adequate, nuanced
> > coverage. Meanwhile our (second?) Gilded Age seems to be missing three
> > important things as well - which would be great if more people took
> > the time to listen/seek to understand re: network engineering and IT
> > operations.
> >
> > _1. Listen with Curiosity, Seek to Understand_
> >
> > _2. Avoid Reducing Issues into Binary Positions _
> >
> > _3. Walk a Mile In the Other Person's Shoes_
> >
> > ... here's to helping bridge the gaps!
> >
> https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/importance-communication-especially-on-going-david-bray-phd
> >
> > -d.
> >
> > On Wed, Oct 25, 2023 at 9:27 AM Nathan Simington via Nnagain
> > <nnagain at lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
> >
> >> Branching from Dave's thread because I don't want to get into the
> >> politics, but I would like to very strongly endorse Dave's remarks
> >> about how the incredible accomplishments of network engineers are
> >> totally unacknowledged and misunderstood (e.g., note the public
> >> policy emphasis on line speed over all else.) As such, I'd like to
> >> solicit the members of this list to suggest some of the greatest
> >> accomplishments in network engineering that you've never seen
> >> properly acknowledged or appreciated. I'd like to promote and
> >> discuss them in speeches and papers to help get more sunlight on
> >> them.
> >>
> >> 0. Let's get network engineering some applause, please!
> >> Both recent and historical accomplishments are welcome. I just want
> >> to help get more people thinking about what a difference network
> >> engineering has made to everyone's lives! All technologies,
> >> personalities and accomplishments welcome!
> >>
> >> Beyond this specific thing, in terms of public discourse, I'd love
> >> to get more opinions about how to communicate to the public about
> >> the tech underpinnings of the world we live in now, and I'd love
> >> comments on how to discuss and promote any of these topics:
> >>
> >> 1. Infrastructure advances
> >> It would generally do a lot of good if the public were to think of
> >> "tech" less as purely the consumer-facing side and more in terms of
> >> fundamental architecture and infrastructure. For example, there's
> >> really no point talking about "AI" in the public-facing aspect of
> >> end-user LLM experiences without first looking at how the cost of
> >> compute and transit has gone through the floor compared to 15 years
> >> ago or so. I can't even disentangle all the drivers, but they must
> >> include at least:
> >>
> >> * New uses for GPUs driving advances and slashing prices in GPU
> >> tech
> >>
> >> * Vast advances in back-end cloud (to pick one company,
> >> Sawzall/Lingo/GFS/Colossus plus associated datacenters is almost
> >> invisible to the public, and I have no idea what's powering Chinese
> >> AI back-ends)
> >> * Nuts-and-bolts development in ML/data science that are eroding
> >> the fuzzy boundary between ML done as a planned, discrete query by
> >> an expert over a small, curated dataset and ML as a quasi-autonomous
> >> system not requiring expert queries, given authority over physical
> >> devices, doing its own ingestion, etc -- "a sufficiently large
> >> difference in quantity is itself a difference in quality"
> >>
> >> This stuff is particularly worth asking about because we are now at
> >> least 30 years into what I think of as "pervasive networked personal
> >> computing," now in wireless and appified form, and I think the
> >> public experiences this as just advances that "happen by themselves"
> >> in the ordinary course without seeing the jags in the step functions
> >> underwriting the apparent smooth curve of progress.
> >>
> >> 2. Security in real-world systems
> >> Getting hacked used to mean losing data, having devices bricked,
> >> maybe getting co-opted into a botnet, etc. Now it's a lot scarier,
> >> because we are increasingly surrounded by always-on,
> >> always-connected devices whose security infrastructure is a black
> >> box and which may be trusted with controlling physical equipment.
> >> It's bad enough if your household appliances are phoning home
> >> (where?) with your credit card number. It's a whole new level of
> >> scary if there are possible APTs in the power grid and whoever
> >> manufactured the IOT modem in a transformer is about 8 degrees of
> >> separation from the grid operators. Even if there's no malice
> >> intended, modern grid balancing is a new level of challenging
> >> because you may have multiple sources of generation with immense
> >> moment-by-moment fluctuations in inbound generation, etc., and
> >> that's just one category, leaving groceries, ports, financial
> >> markets, building security, whatever replaces positive train control
> >> (PTC) down the road, vehicular autonomy, industrial operations, etc.
> >> to one side...
> >>
> >> Panic reactions are one thing, but it would be more productive for
> >> the public to think about what their expectations are for how to
> >> react to these new capabilities and challenges and then demand that
> >> the policy sector cashes this out into new standards by consulting
> >> with technologists. I would therefore love advice on what you think
> >> the public needs to know. Maybe some kind of public forum that could
> >> get press or a white paper that could get written up in an op-ed?
> >>
> >> On that note, in addition to (or instead of) commenting on this
> >> posting, please consider commenting on the US Cyber Trust Mark
> >> proceeding now open at the FCC (comments close November 10th,
> >> commenting link here:
> >> https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs/search/docket-detail/23-239). If you'd like
> >> to talk about this off-list, please drop me a line at NS at fcc.gov.
> >> I'll let you know in advance if anything you want to say requires
> >> you to file an "ex parte" statement so that you don't have to worry
> >> about going on the record unintentionally. This is a fantastic
> >> opportunity for the network engineering and computer security
> >> communities to air their concerns in a federal forum in a way that
> >> may bind the federal government going forward.
> >>
> >> 3. The future isn't evenly distributed
> >> Talking to a friend who does industrial devops reminded me of this
> >> fantastic postmortem on healthcare.gov [1]'s rollout:
> >> https://lobste.rs/s/igt4ez/10_year_anniversary_healthcare_gov.
> >> Obviously I don't need to tell the career professionals this, but
> >> tech advances don't necessarily propagate, and if they do, it may be
> >> at radically different rates between different countries, companies,
> >> sectors... (If I needed a reminder of this, I recently had to upload
> >> DICOM files to a hospital using a terrible Java applet that was
> >> obviously written so long ago that it only wanted to upload from
> >> CDs, i.e., at a time when you wouldn't have spent hard disk space on
> >> DICOMs. I eventually managed to "persuade" it that a flash drive was
> >> a CD.)
> >>
> >> This ties into points 1 and especially 2, because if we want the
> >> full social benefits of all the advances modern engineering has
> >> accomplished, we need to get people in "nontraditional" sectors
> >> thinking about the benefits of the communications and controls
> >> capabilities that are now on the table. Everyone should be asking
> >> why we aren't doing ML to reduce the cost and energy consumption for
> >> making breakfast cereal, totally pedestrian stuff like that; if the
> >> answer is juice isn't worth the squeeze, that fine, but that's going
> >> to run on a delay because, as the healthcare.gov [1] example shows,
> >> high-value new practices may be invisible to a sector that would
> >> definitely benefit from them.
> >>
> >> Sorry for the very lengthy post, and as they say on the artist
> >> formerly known as Twitter, "my DMs are open." And thanks for
> >> everything you all do!
> >>
> >> All the best--
> >> Nathan
> >>
> >> On Tue, Oct 24, 2023 at 3:22 PM Dave Taht via Nnagain
> >> <nnagain at lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
> >>
> >>> On Tue, Oct 24, 2023 at 11:21 AM the keyboard of geoff
> >>> goodfellow via
> >>> Nnagain <nnagain at lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>
> >> ➔➔https://twitter.com/BrendanCarrFCC/status/1716558844384379163
> >>>
> >>> Leaving aside the rhetoric, I believe the majority of these claims
> >>> on
> >>> this part of his post:
> >>>
> >>> https://twitter.com/BrendanCarrFCC/status/1716884139226329512
> >>>
> >>> to be true. Any one question this?
> >>>
> >>> I do wish that he showed upload speeds, and latency under load,
> >>> and,
> >>> acknowledged some mistakes, at least, and did not claim perfect
> >>> success. Also individual states had stepped up to institute their
> >>> own
> >>> rules, and I would love to see a comparison of those stats vs
> >>> those
> >>> that didn´t.
> >>>
> >>> The COVID thing I am most fiercely proud of, as an engineer, is we
> >>> took an internet only capable of postage stamp 5 frame per sec[1]
> >>> videoconferencing to something that the world, as a whole, relied
> >>> on
> >>> to keep civilization running only 7 years later, in the face of
> >>> terrible odds, lights out environments, scarce equipment supplies,
> >>> and
> >>> illness. ISPs big and small helped too - Their people climbed
> >>> towers,
> >>> produced better code, rerouted networks, and stayed up late
> >>> fighting
> >>> off DDOSes. People at home shared their wifi and knowledge of how
> >>> to
> >>> make fiddly things on the net work well, over the internet  -
> >>>
> >>> Nobody handed out medals for keeping the internet running, I do
> >>> not
> >>> remember a single statement of praise for what we did over that
> >>> terrible time. No one ever looks up after a productive day after a
> >>> zillion productive clicks and says (for one example) "Thank you
> >>> Paul
> >>> Vixie and Mokapetris for inventing DNS and Evan Hunt(bind)  and
> >>> Simon
> >>> Kelly(dnsmasq) for shipping dns servers for free that only get it
> >>> wrong once in a while, and then recover so fast you don´t notice"
> >>> -
> >>> there are just endless complaints from those for whom it is not
> >>> working *right now* the way they expect.
> >>>
> >>> There are no nobel prizes for networking.  But the scientists,
> >>> engineers, sysadmins and SREs kept improving things, and are
> >>> keeping
> >>> civilization running. It is kind of a cause for me - I get very
> >>> irked
> >>> at both sides whining when if only they could walk a mile in a
> >>> neteng´s shoes. I get respect from my neighbors at least,
> >>> sometimes
> >>> asked to fix a laptop or set up a router... and I still share my
> >>> wifi.
> >>>
> >>> If there was just some way to separate out the ire about other
> >>> aspects
> >>> of how the internet is going south (which I certainly share), and
> >>> somehow put respect for those in the trenches that work on keeping
> >>> the
> >>> Net running, back in the public conversation, I would really love
> >>> to
> >>> hear it.
> >>>
> >>> [1] Really great talk on networking by Van Jacobson in 2012, both
> >>> useful for its content, and the kind of quality we could only
> >>> achieve
> >>> then: https://archive.org/details/video1_20191129
> >>>
> >>>> --
> >>>> Geoff.Goodfellow at iconia.com
> >>>> living as The Truth is True
> >>>>
> >>>> _______________________________________________
> >>>> Nnagain mailing list
> >>>> Nnagain at lists.bufferbloat.net
> >>>> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/nnagain
> >>>
> >>> --
> >>> Oct 30:
> >>>
> >> https://netdevconf.info/0x17/news/the-maestro-and-the-music-bof.html
> >>> Dave Täht CSO, LibreQos
> >>> _______________________________________________
> >>> Nnagain mailing list
> >>> Nnagain at lists.bufferbloat.net
> >>> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/nnagain
> >>
> >> --
> >>
> >> Nathan Simington
> >>
> >> cell: 305-793-6899 _______________________________________________
> >> Nnagain mailing list
> >> Nnagain at lists.bufferbloat.net
> >> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/nnagain
> >
> >
> > Links:
> > ------
> > [1] http://healthcare.gov
> > _______________________________________________
> > Nnagain mailing list
> > Nnagain at lists.bufferbloat.net
> > https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/nnagain
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.bufferbloat.net/pipermail/nnagain/attachments/20231025/778ad01b/attachment-0001.html>