Gender Violence Recovery Center

Third world networker will be mixing it up at The Safaricom Foundation and the Gender Violence Recovery Center (GVRC) annual fundraising dinner this evening which will be at the Carnivore Grounds.

The Foundation will be matching every shilling raised so I figure it's good use of my money. The foundations results are very visible so I try and support their projects whenever/howevre I can.

why: because third world networker believes in a few things, he also tries to have a life outside the lab and office.

stp, sctp and tcp

It was during a discussion about the migration strategies for the R4/R99 and some LTE test gear that it was disclosed a new STP (Signalling transfer point) would be integrated at around the same time the new core would be coming 'live'. Some of the MPLS vendor's guys have not worked on a mobile core before so it's a learning experience for everyone.

It got more interesting when a 'new' protocol SCTP was mentioned as being in extensive use. One of the guys is a new ccie and as you can imagine his TCP knowledge is still fresh in his mind. It thoroughly bewildered him why SCTP was even necessary in the first place. We white boarded quite a number of reasons with explanations (it makes it easier for the migration if we're all semi clueful of what's going on on the network) so we tend to stop 'everything' and explain alot.

rfc2960 (http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2960.txt) gives a very clear explanation. Please head over there to see why SCTP is necessary for some applications.

I also expect alot more implementations and use of SCTP over the coming years.well at least I expect it at work. It has a mature socket API so writing applications for this is not a big problem for experienced and novice programmers who dont mind putting in some time.

At work I've changed some apps to sctp to gain the 'multihomning advantage', other than that there's really nothing to get excited about. It's however good to have an idea that such a protocol exists, if nothing else, it makes for exciting 'beer' talk.

weird language blues

So the final stages of our core modernization project have had me communicating in very funny acronym like terms: NRFU, FTS,NOS,SFP,XFP,DWDM,Lambda, etc etc add that to all the acronyms we go through for the ccie bgp,ospf,rip,lisp,trill -last two not really ccie stuff but our data center team has them rolling off their tongues too easilly lately and you've got a nice recipe for confusion. Regular project managers (the sort that only ask about time, money (when when when!)) have their own AFAIK,IMO,IMHO...I think we're slowly coming up with a new language....

ok back to TS:-)
Gitau

Why I got back on the ccie wagon!

Well my written had expired, pursuing it (the ccie) was no longer fun -I have had more exciting projects this year- and other areas of my life were not keeping up with the extensive study required to get the ccie lab done.

However: I find that there are now several good, quite good reasons with actual practical application to go back to it. So I re-took the written v4 -twice (I had underestimated and grossed over some topics! assembled an actual lab and I think Im in pretty good form to go for the lab now.

And yes the main motivation is now a job swap or go independent. After this project Im working on (a huge major mobile core redesign/migration from the good old tdm to the IP wonders featureing a no small number of CRS-1's (P) and 7609's (PE)) - throw in multivendor CE's and the fun just never stops. I can only foresee boredom and trouble tickets after this :-( unless something changes within the organization (from structure to compensation policies).

JGitau

African Peering and Interconnection Forum: Unlocking Africa’s Regional Interconnection

The internet society is for 3 days sponsoring a conference :
The African Peering and Interconnection Forum: Unlocking Africa’s Regional Interconnection

Now for most that know me, I started my career working for a startup ISP that has since grown way bigger than I had imagined. I also happen to have been around when we had to technically justify peering and answer questions like what is internet peering, why peer, how does it work etc etc...and finally the KIXP was set up.

Im interestingly caught up in another transformation (IP/Buusiness transformation for a large telco). so see you there...

I moved on quite a bit, but the opportunities to catch up with old friends is always welcome.

http://www.isoc.org/isoc/conferences/africanforum2010/

registration is still open, slides will be availed and live streaming is available here:
http://wavu.kixp.or.ke:8001/afpif

IM conference Service and Email
================================

(a) Those with jabber clients can join the AfPIF conference room,
afpif@conference.isoc.org.

A list of jabber clients can be found at
http://www.jabber.org/software/clients.shtml

(b) Those without can send their comments and/or queries to
mwangi@isoc.org, karen@isoc.org and morris@isoc.org

Gitau