Notable beard accomplisher and Apstra systems engineer Derick Winkworth shares some thoughts about network blindness. He compares it to face blindness, where people can see all the individual components, but cannot recognize them together. In much the same way, many network engineers build automation into their systems, without recognizing what the purpose of that network is, suffer from that same kind of affliction. Apstra developed with Apstra Operating System in response to this. It provides an abstraction over hardware to create networks with intentionality. The benefit of this is that it allows you to built a network around what you want to do, not change your behaviors based on the network. Derick gets into the nuts in bolts in the piece, but conceptually, its a refreshing take. If you enjoy the piece, make sure to check out all of Apstra’s videos from Networking Field Day.
