Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Community Fabric Podcast, where we bring the network community to the table to talk about the things that matter to them most in their day to day. I'm Darren Forwell, your host for today's recording, and I'm joined by someone who's very close to many of our hearts and a real fixture in our community. Would you like to introduce yourself, sir? Laying it on pretty thick there. Alright.

So I'm Dan Kelcher, a solutions architect here at IP Fabric. Been in the field for 20 some odd years now doing all sorts of fun stuff. So, yeah, lots of lots of good times to be had. Both both now and in the future, hopefully. But, but you've just come back from 1.

Right? I I have Went to Cisco live last week wearing the hat. I I managed to make it home this time without coming home with COVID, so I figured that was a a definite improvement over last year. But, yeah, it was a it was a great time. Excellent.

Yeah. So I remember the, the the return, the COVID walk of shame myself as well. It it was was that wasn't a great time. But, but the the the lead up to it wasn't so bad. It was actually, I guess, I'd I'd probably say it was worth it.

I I didn't get laid up too bad. Wasn't wasn't as rough as it could have been, so I'd I'd prefer to have not had to deal with it, but definitely, the the event was a good time. Well, it was good to me as well. Right? So that was, like, I guess, the first time we've met in person.

So, that was that was a there was always good opportunity, but, yeah. No. It's it's good that you've that you're back and and still in one piece. It sounds like it was a great event from what I can gather. It's, certainly watching it from from far away as I was.

Yeah. It was, not quite the kind of pre pandemic attendance levels, but from an attendance standpoint, I think they were were saying 18,000 attendees. Right. It was definitely a, you know, quite an active time. There there was a lot going on, something around a 1000 sessions or something.

So there was a lot going on. And I guess lots of lots of announcements and lots of lots of noise. I mean, certainly, I think from a from a social media point of view, I don't think it was anything like that last year. I think people really embraced it this year and really sort of wanted to push out the the joy of, of a post pandemic kind of kind of event, which was, yeah, it was good to see. Yeah.

There was there was definitely more kinda selfies, more people that were kind of interacting with each other, and and just more the kind of normal interactions as opposed to last year, people were a little bit, not necessarily standoffish, but it just it wasn't as as warm. It wasn't as, like, just, you know, go sit next to somebody and have a conversation. You you were still kinda trying to maintain a little bit of distance. Last year, they kept the sessions too. I think it was a 45 minute time limit so they could cycle out the rooms and let the the HVAC kind of do its thing.

So this year, they didn't have the those limitations. The sessions could run as long as they needed to. So definitely kind of hit the started to get more to a a pre pandemic vibe than than last year was. No. That's really good to hear.

I mean, that, yeah, I think last year, we were all just a bit giddy that we were all allowed out again. So, in this, it's good to hear that, that people were being, you know well, had the opportunity to be more social, more community minded, and and you're able to to have the conversations, I guess. But, I suppose for for, again, being remote from it and looking in, Announcement wise, what what, you know, what what were what were the big directions, I suppose, that were being announced? Because there there was such a flood of socials that you kind of missed missed a lot of that. So it'd be really good to get an insight into that.

Even when you're there, there's so much going on. You miss most of it. I guess. I guess. I mean, there were there were some announcements in the the collab space around, like, some some integrations of, like, AI into Webex.

One of the things from a a social standpoint that I I had a little bit of fun with was the there was an announcement of, like, cinematic meetings where, like, the the cameras would, like, change angles a little bit to make things a little bit more dynamic. So my my question that I tried to get answered and nobody from Cisco wanted to acknowledge was when the, Michael Bay plug in would show up where all of a sudden you'd have, like, overly dramatic explosions and giant robots and all of these things happening in a movie. Nobody would nobody would confirm a a date for the the Michael Bay plug in for cinematic. Neither neither confirm nor deny that Right. You you were gonna have those those special effects.

Right. I I think there's there's a huge opportunity there for if anybody from Cisco's prod product team happens to be listening to this, huge opportunity to go out and get some of the the big name directors to to kind of create their own iterations of these plug ins and, you know, you got That sounds amazing. Right. It'd be hilarious. Like, this is the you're meeting as directed by Quentin Tarantino and watch that go.

Yes. Can you imagine? Something like right. It's just right. We're gonna just sit in a bad meeting.

It's so hard. Right. Exactly. Samuel L. Jackson running around in the background.

Say it's a network problem again. Incredible. Well, leave the rest of it out. That'd be incredible. Yeah.

I I mean, from from my standpoint, I'm I'm sort of I was looking out for things around the sort of network corporation side of things. You know, we but, hey, being doing what we do. Right? That's that's part of our day to day. So it's always interesting to hear what's happening around there.

Yeah. Did they have anything interesting for us on that? So there's I'll save the more interesting part for a second. The there's the kind of the Cisco networking cloud idea of a I hate the term single pane of glass, but we'll run with it where essentially kind of trying to to take the different Cisco platforms since now there's a lot of most of them are web UI. So kind of creating almost a calling it a front end is probably oversimplifying it.

But a front end where you log into a kind of a centralized platform and then that's going to use SSO to get you into the various kind of Cisco Right. Technologies. So you log in one time, and then you've kinda got the ability to switch between Meraki or ThousandEyes or what have you. From a, like, an actual operational standpoint, I don't necessarily know that it's gonna be a game changer day 1 from a network engineer standpoint, because really, if all you're doing is switching from a 1000 eyes view to a, you know, whatever other platform view, if it's Meraki, whatever, you're still dealing with each one kind of being its own independent network. As a separate But I as the kind of future outlook, there is like, there's some talk of trying to standardize the UI so that the the look and feel is similar.

And then, hopefully, that kind of builds towards more integration between the platforms where from a a user standpoint, you primarily interact with 1 platform and what it does on the back end. However, it you know, the SDNify my collection of SDNs. Yeah. So And and that's, I suppose, the holy grail, isn't it? The the this this idea of one SDN to to rule all all others.

I mean, it's it's almost I guess, it's almost orchestration then, isn't it? It gets gets quite interesting. But, but it sounds like on the face of it, at the moment, it's very much I won't say gloss, but it's first baby steps. Right? It's it seems like the kind of the, you know, step 1, get the, you know, the the login page up.

Get the the SSO. Get the ability to, from a user standpoint, kind of seamlessly move between platforms. And then once that's done, hopefully, the ability to kind of drill in, One of the kind of the interesting takes on this is the idea that does do the platforms need to be truly integrated, or is it something where from just a a network engineer standpoint? If you're using, for example, inner site to manage a UCS environment, you're probably not the same engineer that's going in and managing Meraki. So do you need a single interface where you have all of the buttons for every possible product Cisco has if you're really only concerned with 1.

So it's it's an interesting thing to see where it goes. In most of my career, I've been in in smaller environments where I, excuse me, where I was the one guy. Wow. Lost yeah. Losing my voice here.

Too much too much talking at Cisco Live. I thought it was back. But, anyway, the, I guess I guess the you mentioned something actually that was interesting there as well because this isn't just about management platforms for the for the devices. Right? This is about, a term very close to our heart, the the the idea of assurance about about ensuring the network.

And all the different elements of the network are working together in concert to deliver a service, which is where one of the other announcements came came through, Right? Where there was they were talking about extending the whole full stack observability with 1,000 eyes and app dynamics and all that sort of stuff. Is what did you take from that? Yeah. So the the big thing here, I with with the whole concept of kind of full stack observability, one of the things that I have been waiting for with with bated breath was the idea of a kind of a single platform for it because previously, the the FSO idea was we have inner site, we have ThousandEyes, we have AppD.

They're 3 separate platforms, and you can kind of integrate them and and pull data from one platform to the next. But it wasn't necessarily kind of a full end to end integration where I went into a single platform and could drill into all the different things. So they announced the the FSO platform and they had some demos on it. And it's it's actually, I think, a a really cool idea. It's, again, a kind of a infancy as far as a kind of a Cisco product goes.

But some of the demos that they had where third parties were kind of coming in and taking some of the data and doing things, there's some some definite power that's available. Kind of a high level is just they they take all of the different data sources, feed all of the the different sources into basically a data lake, and then give you the ability to from that data lake, grab the data that you need, show what you need to. If you're if you're building integration, take the data from that data lake, do with it whatever it is you need, and then present the data back in a way that's hopefully useful and consumable. So this is an interesting point. Right?

So this is this is kind of what the the promise, I suppose, of observability is is is the idea of you've got a bunch of data coming from a whole bunch of different sources that, yeah, you've got your application experience in in ThousandEyes, and you've got AppDynamics with with understanding the application delivery, I suppose, and and so and into site looking after the the service infrastructure that sits underneath it. It's a bit of a gap there. We should talk about that sometime, but that's, that's a whole different story. Yeah. And actually But but I suppose it's the idea is to that, though, one of the things that is interesting and and hopefully will be coming out soon, trademarked, is because this this platform is kind of a data lake type system.

The ability to integrate that with other solutions that might be able to provide, certain degrees of visibility into devices connectivity in a, you know, multi platform fashion. I mean, like like like context data for for network infrastructure. State information, intent, all that. Like, yeah. Topology.

Yep. Be able to take all that. Look. I think I know something that might be able to do. I've heard of something similar.

It was, like, SPX cloth or something like that. I'd I'd have to look it up. Oh, wait wait a minute. Wasn't there a a China talk where someone mentioned something about that big The hairy guy that made a bunch of jokes and asked a bunch of questions. Yeah.

I saw that. It was it was If if anyone wants to if anyone wants to know what that was, we'll we'll put it in the show notes, the link to that to that video. It's the it was actually a great conversation. I the video, I wish the, like, there was a bunch of questions where, you know, spanning tree problems. How many people have spanning tree problems?

And you can't see the the audience hands going up? So you just kind of as you're going through and watching it, if you happen to go through and watch it, you've gotta you've gotta imagine a room full of people shaking their heads and raising their hands every time that spanning tree comes out, like, it's So it goes. Yeah. Yeah. It was it was it was an entertaining watch.

But, yeah, I'll recommend it to, to anyone who's listening. But but, yeah, I mean, I I guess that's the point here, right, is that it's that it's the the data is bringing the data together. It's it's being able to to consolidate it, correlate it, do all of those things without having to sit down and do it yourself, which is which is one of the biggest things we're trying to address in in all operations at the moment, isn't it? That that that networks are so complex now. Trying to do that as the network engineer who's responsible for ensuring this is available is super difficult because it's just there's just too much data, too much to understand.

Right. And you get the the kind of ever present challenge of there's there's only so many hours in a day even when you're working 16 of them, and you get the you know, it's a network problem or it's slow or whatever and trying to go through. And when you're talking about, you know, dozens, hundreds, thousands of devices, and now as we get into, like, the SDN platforms and we've got overlays, we've got underlays, we've got tunnels, we've got cloud platforms, we've got all of these different tools that are out there, The number of places that this data exists is problematic to to just wrap your head around where these things are. So a lot of times, it's, you know, sadly almost easier to just kind of bury your head in the sand and just be like, everything's fine here. I I don't I don't know what you're talking about.

Yeah. Right. Yeah. Move on. No.

That's right. Minutes looking for it. I didn't find anything. I yeah. So It must be DNS.

Problem. Exactly. Turn it off. Turn it on again. Do you know?

Yeah. It'll it'll sort itself out. Yeah. No. And this is and this is the problem.

Right? Because we've spent so long having to do that as complexities got got, you know, greater and greater, that there's now a reputation in in in IT more generally that that, you know, doing having a more available network is hard. And and so, you know, we need this kind of tooling. So interesting that that, Cisco are kind of kind of catching up, I suppose, with a lot of other, other platforms that that already do this stuff. So, obviously, they have the advantage of being able to integrate all of their own their own other platforms to do that.

So be interested. Do you do you know how multi vendor the approach is? Just out of interest. So, specifically, no. The idea would be from a data lake standpoint, it's gonna consume open telemetry data.

So Right. Right. If you're sending if you're able to send open telemetry data into it and there's, I mean, there's other platforms that will just take data, convert it to open telemetry, and and send it out. So that, I think, is one of the things that's going to be really potentially the the game changer here where if we can take data from Yeah. Something like an AppD where it's looking more at an application stack.

We can take something from 1,000 eyes where it's network performance. We can take the individual devices and and what they're doing. Take all that. Send that all into a single kind of repository. And then from there, start to build out what we're looking at.

Then it's there's a huge potential there to to take all of these kind of disparate data sources, merge them all together, and build something from it. The the big question then is going to be how easy is it? Because these are these are always things where, like, every time that in, you know, we're talking about Cisco, but every vendor does this. Like, they'll they'll come up with their 3 letter, 4 letter acronym for their new technology. And it's really easy, and it sounds great, and they cross the world.

And then you try to actually implement it, and after 6 months, you're still scratching your head, unsure of what you're doing or or whatever, and it's half implemented. Nobody knows it. It just sits there for This is this is the yeah. There's so many problems, doesn't it, with that sort of thing? There's there's right.

Okay. Who who actually knows how this thing works and how it's set up? Will I get the support from the vendor? Because the vendor themselves aren't necessarily set up to do that. It's more of a sales architecture, right, rather than a than an actually implementable solution and that that kind of thing.

So I guess, yeah, same with all these things. Right? We'll, watch this, watch this space, really. I guess the other thing you know, you you touched on this before with Cisco Live. The other thing is is the people.

Right? It's it's who you see there and the conversations and everything. I mean, how how much fun did you have with that? I have said this many, many times. The Cisco Live, the best part of it is the people.

It is being able to to have the interactions, you know, not to not to downplay the the technology and the sessions, but generally speaking, if there's announcements, you know, I can call up a Cisco rep and say, hey. Fill me in on what these announcements are. There's there's gonna be press releases and blogs and and all of that other stuff to get a lot of the announcements out. There's plenty of material that's out on what the different platforms are and what they do. So that part of it is, yes, it's nice to be able to to kind of consume in a a collective environment.

But even in the sessions, being able to have conversations with people, if even if not necessarily the the presenter, but, like last year, I was in a session where, they were talking about 1,000 eyes. And after the session, there was a group of us just standing around talking about different ways that they could implement it. And it was, you know, more of a peer to peer. 1 of the 1,000 eyes guys was there talking as well, but it was a lot of peer to peer conversation. And what are they doing with it, or how is it being implemented, or what are the challenges that they faced, or how did they solve them, or or whatever.

Like, that's those conversations are great because you get the the understanding of what people are doing and from the the field as opposed to from kind of a a sales rep just, hey. You know, that architecture thing. Like, here's this new thing that's gonna change the world for you, and, you know, the implementation might not be as easy. Actually, talking to people is is hugely beneficial. Well, you get you get that sort of realistic feedback, I suppose, on the do's and don'ts and the approach and and otherwise.

Right? And and I think that yeah. Like I said, that that in itself is invaluable, right, to to to have that insight into the into the technology. But it's not even about the technology half the time. Exactly.

Then it's just being able to have, you know, the one of the the beautiful things is that you take, you know, tens of thousands of people that we all have common interests. We're all technologists. We all enjoy geeking out about, you know, networking and and all the various facets of it. So you can take a bunch of people that have similar passions. You know?

Yes. You can talk about the technology, but because it's an in person event, you're talking to people. So, you know, there's there's stroopwafels growing up going around, and you get you get weird looking hairy guys wearing kilts. And, I I have no idea who one of those guys might been might have been. No.

No idea. No. I know a few. Yeah. There there were a buzz button.

There wasn't just one. Yeah. Yeah. But, yeah, it's being able to to have those kind of it's on one hand, yes, it's a kind of a professional event you're going and you're learning and you're talking tech, but you're also going and you're talking to people that are in the industry that are passionate about what they do. So there's there's that part of it where you can have some some really great conversations.

And then there's also the being able to connect with people that you otherwise wouldn't normally have had the opportunity to. So, you know, there's a a relatively small body of water that separates the 2 of us. And the the first time, like you said, that we were able to meet face to face was Cisco Live. Yeah. I went around.

I brought a couple of my Cisco press books with me and and had those got them signed by by the authors. So, like, I I spent time talking to literally talking to the people that wrote the book on on various things. I was talking to Yeah. That's invaluable. Right?

It just from a, you know, the the geek in me, like, the the bucket list things that you get to, you know, tick off, like, you know, sitting down talking to to Peter Jones and talking to people that, like, yeah, talking to people that wrote pro like, the one of the guys that or the guy that wrote the e I EIGRP protocol was milling about, and I got introduced to him. And it was it was one of those moments where it was like, I didn't realize there was a guy that wrote this. I, like, just I I never even considered it. Like, just somehow this thing sprang into existence, and he somehow somehow just mythically appeared. But, yeah, like, there's this this human element.

He is he is if you're talking about don if you're talking about Donnie Savage, he is a bit of a wizard anyway. Right? Is is There's definitely a a degree of wizardry to it. Like, there's there's a unique type of person that Peter Jones, same kind of thing. Like, some of the the distinguished engineers stuff at Cisco.

Like, there's some there's some interesting folks out there, but it's it's also as I mean, I again, I I was talking to people where I've had their books on my shelf for years. I've you know, that that part of it or people that even outside of books, people that, you know, you you follow on social media. So, you know, talk to Dwan and David Bumble. Talked to Fantastic. I I don't even know how many people.

I one of these days, I need to go through and count my selfies. I I know I know someone you I know someone you did speak with, and you had to meet the engineer session with. Right? Oh, actually. Talk to me about John Caput.

One bearded guy to another. It was a a great conversation. A a a meeting of minds. Something like that. Meeting of beards, the minds were just kind of Yeah.

Yeah. Brought along for because they they have to. They're they're just For the ride. Stuck together. Yeah.

Like, that's that's kind of the thing. Being able to have conversations with people like John, he's just it's it's awesome. Yeah. There's a lot of stuff that he's he's been doing over the years from an automation standpoint. There's a lot of stuff that, like, he's been doing a lot with AI and chat gpt lately.

So it was it was cool. One of the reasons why I actually booked one of the the MTE sessions was just when you look at people like John or one of the other sessions I booked was with Jason Gulley because these guys are they're very airy, in demand people, and being able to just be like, ah, I've got you cornered in a room for 45 minutes in a totally not creepy way. Right. So you've got a ton of away. But, yeah, being able to talk to John about where kinda where he sees automation and, like, one of the big things that I I talked to him about, and I I think this is probably a an episode in and of itself.

But within the kind of the agile mindset from a a software development standpoint, the idea that the the code is the documentation that you you focus on having, you know, functional and consumable code as opposed to having, like, meticulous documentation. And from a network standpoint, this as we get more and more towards automating networks and infrastructure as code, one of the the questions that I asked him was basically along the lines of what does that you know, the code is the documentation. What does that mean to networks? Does it mean that if I if I write my my Ansible playbook that I still need, you know, a layer 2, layer 3 topology diagrams? Do I need that stuff, or is the code the documentation and I'm done?

And they give the the really short version of the answer because, you know, this like I said, this could be an episode should be an episode in and of itself. But essentially, the That's what we do. You you need the documentation as a separate thing to piece things together, to know how they interconnect, to know kind of the the guideposts of where things are and all that stuff. So it's having the the automation, having the scripts, having all of that is important from an operational standpoint. But being able to have kind of that foundation of the what is the environment?

How are things connected? What are they doing? All of that stuff, that's that is a foundational requirement. It's interesting, isn't it? It's because it's it comes back to that whole, can you possibly automate everything?

And and, you know, have you already got something that you can't automate? And so anything you're only ever gonna automate the new stuff. And then it's like the whole Brownfield situation. Okay. I need to know what's there now and how the new interacts with the old, and there's so many things.

And and I know you're doing study at the moment for the CCDE. Right? And and those kinds of things play straight into that because it's all then about being able to to appreciate the interaction of technologies as well as, you know, how you deploy them as well. I mean, the the overall idea of one one person in a greenfield environment, Yeah. You don't need to document anything.

You can you're you're laying it all out. You know how it works. But as soon as you start dealing with you've got multiple people that need to be able to understand it. Mergers, acquisitions, those are always a a fun one to talk about where, hey. You're now responsible for not only managing the network that you know, but this whole environment that's already up and running that you've never seen before.

And I one of my favorite sayings, I I spent a lot of time in the the consulting space was there's always a method to the madness. Working in IT, the madness is constant. Somebody had a reason for doing what they did. So the the reason that that one weird cable seems to be strung from one point to the other, like, it's Eddie, if there's a big do not touch sign on it, there's a reason that it's there. It doesn't necessarily make sense.

Yes. But somebody somewhere had a good idea. Right. I've run 1 or 2 of those cables. You go in and you look at a config, and you see, like, this is temporary, and that was added two and a half years ago.

But yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. And and I guess that's the point, isn't it? That that you've always got to cater for the situations that fall outside normal normal operations in air quotes.

I mean, that's that's that's always gonna be the problem. So, yeah, I can understand that for sure. And and and I know with with John, I'm sure he he gave you the full the full AI chat GPT angle on this as well. Right? There's some interesting stuff there.

I, yeah, we we just need to get John on for the next episode and really dig into this because Let's let's There's let's do that. Let's do that. That sounds like a There's some interesting conversations to be had. Yeah. For sure.

Awesome. Well, listen, Dan. I've taken up way too much of your time, but, it's always always good to speak. Any closing thoughts about Cisco Live generally? I'll take the opportunity to say you should have been there.

And gotta gotta take gotta take this shot when I can. I'll tell you. I I will I'll throw out a couple of of kind of things where, first off, for anybody that happens to be listening that hasn't gone, it's it's an awesome opportunity. It's it's great to be able to connect to with different people, throw again few just kind of weird plugs out there. But the the community side of this is, like I said, this is to me, that's the biggest part.

So shameless plug number 1. Yeah. Cisco has a couple of different insiders programs. They've got the insiders champions. They've got insiders advocates.

So those are great ways to just meet people, start having some of those conversations. And then if you if you do end up going and you've never been or even if you have been, but you're the a little bit more of the introverted person, don't be afraid to go up and talk to people and just strike up conversations. It's, again, it's the best part of Cisco Live, being able to have those those conversations. And, you know, somebody somebody there's plenty of people there. Somebody doesn't wanna talk to you and they just brush you off, there's plenty of other people.

Right. Like It'll be someone else. It it's also a a I think a lot of people go into it going like, you know, oh, this person's way bigger than I am. They would they would never take the time. I mean, yes, there's probably a couple of people that are out there that have that mentality, but realistically, you're better off than not wasting your time with those people.

But the you know, everybody that I talked to was more than willing to have conversations and, yeah, I so many times like, there was a point I was sitting around with, Jason Gulley and Michelin Murphy, and we were just sitting there kind of swapping stories of weird network issues that we ran into. So, like, just complete ad hoc conversations that were were great. I I love those. They're my favorite bit. I've got I've got to take.

Because sitting in the certification lounge or something and and one of the you you mentioned the book authors. Right? You one of the book authors wanders in, and you just go, ah, you got a minute? And then or or you can just be seeing them sitting sitting, sipping a cup of coffee, and you go, oh, is the coffee any good? Just open it up, and then you end up talking to them for 2 hours or whatever for that.

I I you mentioned CCB. I spent a lot of time talking to Zig about the the exam in the book. You know? Right. Like, it was Great guy.

You know, again, just great conversations. The it's it's stuff that you can't get outside of an event like that. You just you don't have the ability to just walk up to these people and Well, you you're never gonna you're never gonna set up a meeting, you know, on Teams or something to to go for that conversation, are you? So it's that that ability to to just spin something up. Yeah.

It's Like, it's much better. Great time. If you haven't gone, definitely worth worth at least giving it a go once in your life and, you know, make the most of it. Have have conversations. Have fun.

You've you've sold me. You're going next year. I'm I'm I'm going next time. That's it. Listen, Dan, thank you for your time, mate.

It's been really, really good to talk, And, well, we'll be speaking again soon anyway. So Sounds good. Thank you. Thank you very much.