The machines are watching you. And everything else.

How do self driving cars know what they are looking at? How does Google Photos know how to tag various things like dogs and cats in photographs? The answer is object detection, which is the subject of a TED Talk that Joseph Redmon gave a TED talk in April of this year. The talk is located at https://www.ted.com/talks/joseph_redmon_how_a_computer_learns_to_recognize_objects_instantly#t-445883. Joseph works on an open source object detection program called Darknet.

Joseph's talk was fascinating, as I had no idea that computer object detection had come so far in recent years. In the back of my mind I suppose I must have known (how else can self-driving cars know what to avoid?), but watching the talk really put it into perspective. Just 10 years ago the thought of having a computer that was able recognize objects in real time would be ridiculous. 5 years ago it was getting a little more plausible, but the assumption was that you would need a super powerful cluster of computer processing images like mad. Now it can be done with a phone, and indeed, Joseph used his phone to show the identification of random objects in real time. It was amazing.

There are all sorts of applications for this technology. A self driving car is only the tip of the iceberg. How about a surgery assistant robot? Or assembly line product matching? Or a replacement for a service dog? The possibilities are almost limitless. If this technology can run on a simple phone today, what will it look like in 5 years? I, for one, am very excited to find out.

Network automation for fun and profit

The podcast "This Week in Enterprise Tech" recently had an episode (# 258) where the focal point was network automation, specifically, InfoBlox. Infoblox is an enterprise IPAM (IP Address Management) and network change control solution.

The podcast was pretty clearly in favor of InfoBlox, and likely for good reason. I have not used Infoblox specifically, but I have used other network management and IPAM solutions before, and they are definitely a worthwhile investment that can make life as a network administrator much easier and more productive.

For example, in many large organizations, tracking of IP addresses and allocations is simply done through a spreadsheet that is manually updated. While not a terrible idea in theory, in practice such a sheet will quickly go out of date. Automating this process is an obvious win, both for keeping things current and removing human error.

Managing IP addresses is a good thing, but a better thing is centrally managing your networking infrastructure. With Infoblox (or other solutions), you can push out scripted changes to any number of network devices, thus removing the human element of error that manually making changes to devices can involve. Along with this management functionality comes the ability to keep historical configurations of all network devices, thus making it easy to quickly roll back any changes that may not go according to plan.

Infoblox has all of this capability and more, but... these things don't really do you a lot of good if your networking infrastructure is not homogeneous. Yes, you can automate changes to all of your Cisco devices, but what about the Dell core switches? What about those two forgotten HP Procurves? What about those old D-Links that are handling the labs? A network change management solution will definitely HELP in these situations, but it's definitely not going to be as effective as it would be if you had a standardized environment.

Additionally, as the podcast stated, Infoblox is built for the enterprise. Which, granted, makes sense, since it's a podcast about enterprise tech... But that being said, most businesses aren't enterprises. The network infrastructure for most businesses is a hodge-podge of devices. Sure, it would help to have a solution like Infoblox in place, but those solutions are NOT cheap, and probably won't provide enough benefit to justify the cost of putting it into place.

Final thoughts: If you are an enterprise and you don't have an automated network management solution in place, then you are doing it wrong. If you are an SMB, then it might be a good idea, but you will need to be very diligent about weighing the costs vs benefits of such a decision.

I have been asked why I am taking classes at MATC. The answer is pretty simple: Because learning, at least for me, is easier when it is guided.

My daily work involves all sorts of complicated networking and computer related problems. Learning to code would be a great boon to what I do, but actually sitting down and and taking the TIME to learn to code--after working on computers all day long--is much easier said than done. After I realized that I had some GI Bill benefits remaining, I decided it would be a really good idea to take programming classes that would actually give me specific and dedicated times to learn, rather than just being able to say: "ehhhh, I don't feel like it tonight".

So here I am, three weeks in, and I'm already learning all sorts of useful stuff.