sliding back in the game 2013 will be awesome !!!!!

It happens, to each and every one of us sometimes several times in a lifetime. Every once in a while especially as you get older, we all get called upon to do something. Many times over it tends to be outside your comfort zone. I believe in challenges, especially when I start to feel 'settled', or bored; Probably both.

It could be a new life complete with relocation, a new job, a new business, a new spouse, the future could be anything. Sometimes its by choice or forced on you like a whack you in the ass diagnosis that forces a lifestyle change. Sometimes it is standing your ground for something we personally believe in. The majority might never see it your way, but change happens, and for each change unless you are very very lucky, something or someone always gives.

Well friends, another transition beckons. My self imposed retirement is over; or I ran out of money:-) speculate some in the comments. Either way the tardis is firing u, just about to take off and when the doors open I'll be sure to see you around some more.

Over the next couple of days I will bridge the gap on what I was up to whats next etc etc...it was a really good year:-)

Random thoughts

For the past couple of months, I've been quite humbled by how far the SP community had moved without me. I visited Gambia for the AFNOG conference, this time I stayed for the entire gig. Made two presentations and sat on a panel then of course the main plan was to teach the AR-E (Advanced Routing) class; I ended up learning alot more than I ever got to show or teach.

Team AR-E

Philip was truly an inspiration and if some day I can do slides at half the rate he produced the 'design module' for the AR-E class, or be as confident with some of that material, I will be quite happy with myself. *and thats yet another confirmation that being a CCIE can be quite rubbish without some real world in the woods bare knuckles cli combat experience. Lots of it if you are going to teach which explains my interest in teaching/contracting.

It was definately a great opportunity for quiet reflection too (having  a beach close by helped), The fact that I still need more exposure to get any good was obvious. There is no way to land any of those 'big' contracts as a free lancer - so something to think about.

Since the EANOG is supposed to mirror AFNOG, we had a nice chat on how we can make the group truly east african.We have a working plan for this.

Leaving Safaricom was a big deal for me. It was time to head out and experience the world. I am quite open to any opportunity. However as far as full 'permanent and pensionable' jobs are concerned I would only be interested in two scenarios. One is being fully employed by an 'own' business ie one that I own an actual stake in or well I'm sure you can guess the other one. Other than that I'm more than happy with 1 month to 1Yr contracts or just hanging out at the farm:-).

Meantime? I will work on my presentation skills,teaching skills, interview as much as I can (getting interviewed is a great way of knowing what companies want) and definately upgrade my technical knowledge. I suck at all of them at the moment, I will however get better ..... see you around

Thoughts on the IPv6 for African Operators webinar

It started out well with 60 attendees.

My slides are available here: http://goo.gl/GFAad

ISOC will post the recording. Apart from the duration being too short I think it went well. Consider my power went off just after we started (I blame murphy and his laws), I got back on the IPAD and it worked out pretty well. By the time my presentation was due we had 'juice' back up.

So overall I think the ISOC and AFRINIC folks did a fine job with the event.

The concepts IPv6 presenters showed, their examples and implementations will certainly have a hand in shaping how we do networking and general internet stuff --how we get to that end to end port to application nirvana and what that destination really looks like is a bit less certain for most people. But that can be remedied with time. I just hope we dont run out.

IPv6 for African Operators webinar

I'll be part of a webinar on Monday discussing IPv6 for African Operators.

My passion for Ipv6 is known to a number of you. This is a nice opportunity for all of us to share with everyone else since most of the webinar is dedicated to a Q&A.

I will upload the slides for those who miss out and for those that will be over at Afnog next week ( http://www.afnog.org/afnog2012/index.php ), I plan to go through the same more extensively.

I think it will be informative; you and your 'crew' should join in and throw in your ideas or at least start thinking about it a little bit more seriously.

When?

Monday, 30 April 2012, 13:00 (UTC). (I this would be 16:00 GMT ) however, participants are advised to log in half an hour earlier in order to ensure that their connection works properly.

I noticed they erroneously still have my name and Safaricom on the same line. For those that notice it (well you all will now:-) just ignore it.

Here is the link:

http://www.afrinic.net/webinar/ipv6_webinar_30042012.htm

EANOG a few updates

The last BGP session by Michuki was very well attended. Thanks. I'll keep this short.

- We have the eanog.org domain. If any of you volunteers a server for us to host a small site at that would be nice. Just somewhere we can announce events and keep updates running. If one of you can go ahead and design such a site. we'll appreciate it very much. No we have no money to pay but our eternal gratitude and feel free to throw in your logo on the list of sponsors.

Michuki doing his bgp thing

- IHUB allowed us to use the venue every third saturday of the month between 9:30 and 11:30.
 I suggest you get there as much as you can if nothing else for networking. If you would like to give a talk/presentation, please let us know. I think its perfect for you to start out doing this sort of thing among your peers. It tends to lead to happy places.



                                                                                                                                                                     - Topics we have found interesting are in the following areas:
+network management
+IPv6
+Routing (we probably need to give tutorials from novice to advanced for this).
+MPLS - TE/VPN's etc
+Network design
+best practices
+Cloud and related infrastructure.
++Whatever interests you.

We're trying to come up with the entire years calendar so use this thread to give suggestions.

For those coming to Gambia, we're still looking for papers/presentations. For those hoping to get to do that sort of thing, go ahead, prepare something, start with eanog. You can slowly grow your confidence.

This months meeting is on the 21st. We'll confirm.

Photos from that last session:https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/105477416625629534813/albums/5730518025995651601 
video if/when it finishes uploading will be on: http://youtu.be/5-aSSAWvDJs
twitter: @3rdworldnet
youtube: 3rdworldnet

EANOG - Current BGP best practices for IXP's

Oh my, how fast a month goes by:
We have yet another EANOG meeting. I expect a lot more people this time:

EANOG Meetup

Past event - this one was LTE by Huawei - awesome day!

Topic: BGP best practices for IXP's.
Speaker: Michuki Mwangi
Cost: Free
Snacks are sponsored by DataPosit
venue sponsored by Ihub.
After talk beer sponsored by you:-)

Date: 24th March

Time: 9:30 am

This talk is a lead up to a training session to be organized by TESPOK on BGP for IXP's.

michuki:-)

Michuki will review the Internet Exchange Point best practices focusing on BGP. He'll take questions; as many as you may have. You'll also help answer questions.

EANOG is your community, participate,learn grow.
This is our second meeting this year. The last one on cloud computing was very well attended.
We thank you all for your efforts and suggestions on how to improve on things.
Please share the event on other lists.



Join EANOG : http://orion.my.co.ke/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/eanog

Regards,
John Gitau : twitter: @3rdworldnet : http://third-world-networker.blogspot.com/
Techminds Technologies Limited (TTL)

EANOG - Cloud computing demystified - postmortem

Yes thats me!

For everyone that showed up thank you. Someone asked me for the resources used to
put the slides together . I'll just paste them here fr future reference. Add others to the comments.


1: Ivan Pepelnjak's webinars and blog (Most of the slide content came directly from this source). I would encourage you to follow the blog and where possible pay for the webinar content. You won't regret it.


2: Packetpushers end gregs etherealmind blog. Again loads of information there. Subscribe to the podcast.

3: http://datacenteroverlords.com/

4: cloudstack and openflow. I sold most of my lab kit at home to buy a few boxes to mess around with openflow and cloudstack. I have however come across a 'simulator' for openflow that makes learning easier. It uses mininet.

Im sure there are others I missed out.

I sent out photos to the mailing list. Some are below.

A huge thank you to David Kiania  for the photos and Phares for the presentations.

Red carpets and when not to roll them

 Stuff happening to me lately has me thinking quite hard about how to go about hiring and retaining in the future! for everything from farm workers to tech workers. So this (see link below) story sort of had a nice little place in my morning. or Im just weirding the soon to be freelance jitters!


"We hit the first snag when the our then lead architect felt threatened by Ryan.  The lead architect was blocking new ideas.  Ryan was junior and didn’t want to tell me but I was able to pick up on it by listening.  I had to make a choice.  Ryan was much more talented but less experienced.  But I knew that paving over the problem with a few extra bucks wasn’t going to solve the problem.  We chose to move Ryan to be the peer of the lead architect.  Within a few months the lead architect left.  We were fine with it – I didn’t want to lose Ryan."
read some more here  --->
http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2009/11/16/dont-roll-out-the-red-carpet-on-the-way-out-the-door/

EANOG - Cloud computing demystified! or for dummies if you like:-)

I copied this mail verbatim from Phare's mail blast to eanog, I take no credit for the jokes, Im not funny at all:-)

Does the term cloud computing cloud your thinking? Do you associate cloud computing to overcast weather? Are you tired of marketing buzzwords that are never explained like 'SaaS' (You read it as 'Sasa', a common Swahili greeting), PaaS (you assume this means a man from Western Kenya has had enough of his fowl), IaaS (Frankly, simply confuses you) etc?

As EANOG (East Africa Network Operators Group), we have taken it upon ourselves (Yep, we are just nice guys :-) ) to explain and demystify these concepts. Think of it as the class in University you should have been taught, but were not. Think of it as MITx, by regular Wananchi, who speak your language!

Who will be speaking?

Simple people:

1. John Gitau - Nice guy. Loves farming, hiking, talking to people, taking long walks off short piers, a regular guy, who just happens to have a great understanding of networking (a Cisco CCIE, works for Safaricom, usual accolades, but speaks your language, from the grandmother, to the server room geek, he gets you).

2. Phares Kariuki - Again, nice guy. Loves his coffee, music, books and failed attempts at sarcasm. Tries to cook, but tragically succeeds in making dogfood (everything roasts). Happens to work in the virtualization field (has for the last five odd years), as a Business Manager for VMware in Westcon Africa, previously did pre-sales for VMware at Westcon Africa. Can additionally have a conversation with your great aunt and your geek about cloud computing.

We at EANOG believe in keeping things simple. Keeping things straight forward. We will serve coffee. We promise to be simpler and more accurate than our esteemed Kenyan Meteorological Department :-).

When? The 18th of February, 2011, at the iHub, from 10.15 am.

And yes courtesy of one Aaron Mbowa of DataPosit, we'll be providing free snacks. How awesome is that.

Register below!

http://cloudsmadesimple.eventbrite.com/

*DISCLAIMER -  Conversation may veer off anticipated topic, unfortunately an effect of Coffee & ADHD. Forgive us. There will be rules on how to get us back talking about clouds :-).

Career 3.0 - Huge changes coming up

So after years of formal employment, all the books, all the advice, all my energy is soon going to be directed at something different. Im seeking a little chaos, a place to channel my brand of crazy.

This blog is moving too (to its own domain nothing major) just to keep up with the 'times'. I'll be letting you in on my plans within the month since I obviously need your support.

Cisco Validated IPv6 design finally out

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/solutions/Enterprise/Campus/CampIPv6.html

I was happy to find that this is now available and as usual Shannon has done a great job writing up and referencing important material.

Go have a look