James's LISA 2005 journal: Invited Talk

Silly Network Management Tricks

Terry Slattery, Netcordia, Inc.

Network management systems have traditionally not delivered on their promise to help network administrators improve networks. There are a number of reasons why, most of them silly. In this somewhat humorous yet serious talk, I'll discuss specific network management approaches that have contributed to the failure of the network management tools that use them. On the serious side, I'll point out how to avoid the silliness and describe what works and why. Bring your own observations of silly network management tricks to liven the discussion during the question and answer session.

The speaker sounds vaguely like Norm MacDonald.

The "lowest Ethernet address wins" strategy will always result in the
OLDEST machine winning!

There's a neat *poster* at flukenetworks.com that describes mismatched
duplex problems.  Look for it.

Understand the Nyquist sampling theorem.
Averages stink.  95 percentile is useful.

Small, simple tools used well trump complicated but dusty tools every
time.

Summary: there is a WHOLE lot of broken, stupid stuff.

DATA IS NOT INFORMATION.

Useful displays are critical.

tcs@netcordia.com
www.netcordia.com/lisa2005