One Network Architect's View of Life, the Internet, and Everything

Give Up to Get Creative

28 February 2012

You can’t force creativity. One of the most vital skills required to be productively creative is knowing how and when to let go.

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Introducing IPv6 | Neighbor Discovery & SLAAC

23 February 2012

In this final installment of the don’t panic series “Introducing IPv6,” you will learn about Neighbor Discovery and Stateless Address AutoConfiguration.

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Creative Writing for Fun and Profit

20 February 2012

The nice thing about creativity is that it really is like a muscle; the more you use it, the stronger it gets. Creative writing especially targets those often hard to focus idea muscles. This post provides some creative writing exercises to push your brain and get those cogs turning.

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Introducing IPv6 | IPv6 Headers

16 February 2012

The beauty of the IPv6 header is that it has been streamlined and contains only those pieces of information that are necessary on every IPv6 packet. All optional IP information is encoded in extension headers, which are added to packets between the standard IPv6 header and the upper-layer header.

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IPv6 Transit and Peering

13 February 2012

We (the Global Network Engineering Community(GNEC)) have made many mistakes with IPv4 Peering and Transit configurations and operational practices. As operators begin turning up more and more IPv6 E-BGP sessions with peers and transit providers, there is an opportunity to do things right from the beginning.

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Introducing IPv6 | Classifying IPv6 Addresses

9 February 2012

As with IPv4, an IPv6 address serves as an identifier for an interface or group of interfaces. Also like IPv4, IPv6 addresses come in several types, based on how they represent those interfaces. IPv6 has three types of addresses. This post covers all three, plus some special purpose addresses as well.

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Sparking Creativity with Lists

6 February 2012

I recently read James Altucher‘s (self-published) book I Was Blind But Now I See, and one of the (probably the) most immediately useful take aways for me was his advice for exercising the mind. Specifically his suggestion to write ideas every day, in order to foster creativity and avoid allowing the “idea muscle” to atrophy. [...]

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Introducing IPv6 | Understanding IPv6 Addresses

2 February 2012

The primary difference between IPv4 and IPv6 addresses is length. IPv4 addresses are 32 bits long and IPv6 addresses are 128 bits long. This means that an IPv4 address is made up of 32 1s and 0s while an IPv6 address is made up of 128 of them – 128 binary digits. This massive length forces IPv6 addresses to be written using a different notation than IPv4 addresses and thus makes them very easy to distinguish from IPv4 addresses.

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