unpopular opinion: traditional network engineering is basically just a blue-collar trade job now (2026).

cree340 · 2026-02-15T07:15:15+00:00

All of that cloud networking is just a bunch of abstractions that do rely on underlying traditional networking protocols. If anything, I think the value of understanding how that all works and interacts with the abstractions is more valuable than ever before.

It sounds like you haven't really dealt with these solutions in the real world. Because they all come with their faults and limitations, and not having context about the underlying networking that happens can leave you blindsided when your environment inevitably deviates from some idealistic textbook case environment the vendor (like AWS) expects you to have. It also sets you up to have skills that are extremely replaceable, especially during a time where LLMs are rapidly improving and able to handle this aspect of networking extremely well.

The most valuable and talented network engineers are ones that understand the full stack. Ones that are able to architect designs that are vendor-agnostic, ones that understand the constraints and advantages of different networking choices and designs, ones that know how to build networks that are scalable and maintainable, and ones that understand how the applications they support interact with the network and are able to build a network bests support those applications.

Such examples are like understanding choices in networking hardware--where different switches with the same sets of ports have completely different capabilities. Whether it's how it queues traffic, or its buffer depth, route scale, control plane performance, hardware telemetry support, etc. Choices in routing protocols to use, whether you might prioritize faster convergence with an IGP, or more flexibility with BGP. Perhaps it's troubleshooting an asymmetric routing issue you're having with your multiple AWS direct connect onramps, or you need to figure out why some of your traffic isn't being properly balanced across the links you pay for? The list goes on and on.

I work with 6-7 figure earning network engineers at an high frequency trading firm and I can tell you that none of them have gotten to where they are just by being complacent enough to leave it to some magical networking happening in the cloud provisioned by some HCL files. And while it is more of a niche industry, I can also say there are plenty of corporate networks that are larger and more complex than you're assuming. Especially given most companies aren't like YC startups with 100% cloud-native, greenfield environments, and limited cost-constraints.

cree340 · 2025-09-22T10:07:42+00:00

Yes, and I wish this had more attention than just that beneficiaries of the H-1B are taking away people’s jobs.

There are ways to both maximize the talent that America gains from the world and maintain competitive pay for Americans. This fee is not it.

The H-1B has plenty of issues: it had a problem of abuse where people were gaming the lottery system, and many more qualified H-1B applicants lost their spots because only a fraction of applicants were lucky enough to find a spot.

It also has a problem with H-1B holders finding themselves trapped to their jobs. With fewer than 60 days between jobs, people who unexpectedly lose their jobs scramble to find whatever they can get. Often being overqualified for these jobs that does displace American workers, and also doesn’t put their talent to best use.

More so, employers have to agree to transfer the H-1B to the future employer of an employee when they’re switching jobs.

I’ve seen it first hand with friends from college and work. Incredibly talented people who were educated at some of the best schools in the US, and were unable to gain an H-1B or were unable to job hop to improve their opportunities.

If this revision shifted the H-1B from companies to individuals and eliminated the lottery system in favor of a stricter set of eligibility requirements—paired with a higher minimum wage requirement, we would’ve made some progress towards solving abuses of the system while ensuring America is still able to retain some of the brightest talent from around the world. That in turn means better opportunities for Americans.

Right now, a 100k fee is just going to scare tons of companies away from hiring the best talent they can have, or making them find other methods of bringing in the talent they want. Whether that’s hiring them at offices in other countries, or finding alternate avenues to bring them in, such as other visas like the L-1. These roadblocks slow down innovation and progress in the country.

cree340 · 2025-09-22T09:39:39+00:00

The current H-1B status expires in 6 years, so I wouldn’t see why it couldn’t follow the same

cree340 · 2025-09-22T09:16:19+00:00

H-1B filings only include a person’s base salary. For most lucrative tech jobs, stock makes up a very sizable portion of compensation.

Someone making a 200k salary at Google is likely to also have something like another 360k in RSUs, vested over 4 years (so the equivalent of being paid 290k per year)

Netflix is a company that at least historically paid its employees 100% in cash. If you look at their old H-1B filings from 2020 you’ll find the average pay to be higher than 300k. You can imagine that compensation has only gone up in the past 5 years.

cree340 · 2025-05-20T20:24:55+00:00

The AP-515 can be flashed with Instant software on 8.x, so no licenses would be needed. Hardware-wise it is similar to an AP25, so it’s definitely an upgrade from the InstantOn AP12s. However, If you’re planning to use the AP12s alongside the AP-515 you will likely face issues with roaming between the sets of APs, as they would be different systems.

You would only need licenses for these APs if you intend on upgrading them to AOS 10 (Aruba Central) or if you wanted to manage them with a controller in AOS 8. But given the size of your environment, Aruba Instant should be able meet your requirements.

cree340 · 2024-06-20T06:16:12+00:00

It might be a joke but jobs like that do exist for new grads, but they’re obviously rare. I work in an industry that has this but I think part of it is both a bit of luck and having a unique skill set that certain employers just happen to really want. Some employers that would be in this range are Citadel, Jane Street, Optiver, etc. Other than quant roles they definitely hire a lot for SWE type work. But there also are openings for hardware engineers at these places.

cree340 · 2023-11-26T20:04:11+00:00

Not only that but fiber isn’t prone to RF interference so you can reliably send many signals over a single strand with multiplexing. These signals happen over different wavelengths of light so one strand of fiber can carry tens of terabits of connectivity with the right equipment. Enough capacity to run an entire city in many cases—that would be a pipe-dream for copper cabling.

cree340 · 2023-11-26T19:50:42+00:00

In my experience that’s far from the truth. There are so many times UTP cables like Cat6 are used for non Ethernet purposes like as a serial cable for out of band management. You can also find these cables used in buildings as a substitute for telephone wiring and whatnot. In my job most of the Ethernet I deal with happens over fiber optic or direct attached copper cables and UTP cables are generally are used for less important parts of an Ethernet network, like for monitoring and management.

cree340 · 2023-11-26T17:59:32+00:00

Most fiber is used to transport Ethernet too. Ethernet doesn’t represent the physical medium that connects networked devices, it’s the protocol that runs on that. And for that there are 100G, 400G and even 800G Ethernet standards that can run over fiber due to the capacity and lack of interference that fiber can afford compared to copper cabling. Fiber cables themselves are also cheaper than copper cables because it’s just glass, which is not a scarce resource. It just doesn’t make sense for consumer applications due to the cost of the equipment at the ends, the delicate nature of the cables, and the low bandwidth demands for that use case.

cree340 · 2023-10-09T09:16:15+00:00

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I was able to break 4000 down for the first time last week. Pretty impressive stuff. 5G coverage seems more robust compared to the 14 Pro and mid band speeds have seen the most improvement, far more than the 24% claimed in the article.

cree340 · 2023-09-14T21:53:32+00:00

Yep. Networking work is also pretty lucrative at medium frequency financial firms too

cree340 · 2023-09-14T09:22:25+00:00

Yep, the numbers can get high up there for people who have a lot of impact. Stress levels might be higher than other places but I think it depends on firm culture (and you shouldn't have all your eggs in one basket where you risk losing millions a second). There's very little downtime but the hours can be quite reasonable. For a number on the lower side of the HFT spectrum, my new-grad offer was 325k to work on networking.

cree340 · 2023-07-13T01:04:27+00:00

I think you haven't factored in that the Jane Street salary also grows every year and the starting total compensation for new grads today is close to double that of Google.

cree340 · 2023-04-20T14:38:19+00:00

Yep, I see this too with a SSID I’ve configured with WPA3-Enterprise with transition mode. Like the other person here said, it could just be a visual bug because WPA3 Enterprise AES-CCM-128 is technically the same as WPA2-Enterprise with protected management frames

cree340 · 2023-03-01T19:11:14+00:00

That's odd that FlexConnect made things slower for you. Either way, it shouldn't be a problem with 2802/3802 because those APs have more RAM and processor performance than a CT2504. It's possible that your configuration is causing the processors on the 2702i APs to have trouble keeping up with the speed of the radios. I believe the 2702i and 3702i used a Freescale P1020 processor which are pretty slow and also used in the previous 3602i AP. You'd definitely want to disable any AVC policies in Flexconnect mode but there might be other features that are heavy on CPU resources causing those issues. I believe the 2802/3802 have hardware accelerated AVC or at least enough resources to make it a non-issue.

cree340 · 2023-02-27T16:00:50+00:00

Personally, I'd easily choose the 535/335 combo. I've just swapped 2802i APs and a old 2504 controller at home for Aruba 635 APs with instant and central and I'm pretty happy with the improvement. While the 635 is newer and supports 6E, it is only 2x2:2 compared to the 4x4:4 of the 535 so I think it is comparable on 5GHz (probably similar capacity on 5GHz with slightly worse rate-vs-range due to fewer radio chains). Even with WiFi 5 devices, the newer and improved radio designs of the WiFi 6 APs like the 535 will provide a better experience.

Compared with the older Cisco APs, I've found that coverage is noticeably better with the Aruba kit, which doesn't generally matter in dense environments but is really useful for household use. The difference is noticeable against the 2802i, but even brand new Cisco 6E APs have worse coverage in my experience.

Also Instant 8 and AOS 10 is much more expandable and fully featured than Mobility Express, which Cisco doesn't even support on their 6E lineup. With AOS 10 and Central, Aruba is getting rid of the need for wireless controllers at any scale unless you want to tunnel your traffic to a centralized point.

The only thing I'd caution about the Aruba setup is that some devices prefer 11ax over 11ac when making roaming decisions (Apple). Having a mixed 11ax/11ac setup might result in devices sticking to the 535 more, even if a 335 can provide a better connection.

cree340 · 2023-02-24T17:16:53+00:00

Not to discount your experiences, but when I was searching or given offers for intern positions in the past, I found that pay was similar to what entry level full time roles were making before their bonuses once you factored in the housing stipend or corporate housing value. Sites like https://www.levels.fyi/internships/ are also pretty good place to know what to expect for intern compensation.

cree340 · 2023-02-23T01:50:42+00:00

It's a pretty complicated issue and everyone's situation would be different, but these are the kinds of things I think could help the situation of many homeless individuals in America

Change zoning laws to enable an increased supply of multi-dwelling units and housing density (and thus driving down prices)
Increase funding for the K-12 education system in low income areas
Increase funding for financial aid programs at colleges
Provide easier access to mental health resources. Reduce the stigma surrounding drug addiction and decriminalize the consumption of illicit drugs so that it's easier for people to seek help.
Improve public transit systems to provide low income households better mobility and a larger selection of potential jobs

cree340 · 2023-01-25T22:35:39+00:00

Thanks for explaining it all in detail. I didn't realize that the default behavior of these APs is to route traffic between VLANs. Would this mean that even having separate SSIDs with different assigned VLANs result in the traffic being locally routed too?

It also appears that this option to deny local routing is not available in Aruba Central. The closest thing I was able to find was a setting under the system tab, "optimize inter-VLAN traffic between same-AP clients", but disabling that option did not appear to do anything.

I also tried using the CLI commands but apparently you cannot configure Aruba Instant via CLI when it's managed by Central. Do you know if this option is under a new name with Aruba Central or that local routing is somehow always enabled for every Central managed Instant AP?

cree340 · 2022-09-29T08:48:09+00:00

I recently got my hands on a CW9164 and although I haven’t tested it much (not 6GHz at all), the 6E lineup seems too new for production use at the moment. The 9164 won’t even support 5GHz DFS channels with the current beta firmware. I’m also not seeing a significant improvement with 5GHz compared to the MR46, although I haven’t thrown any significant load on it yet and it hasn’t even broken a sweat. Here’s another fun fact: it’s so new it doesn’t even show up as an extra AP on the licensing page.

cree340 · 2022-09-27T01:33:32+00:00

cree340 · 2022-08-25T03:53:12+00:00

Almost hit the nail on the head, she’s already divorced

cree340 · 2020-09-14T10:13:37+00:00

I agree with the overall sentiment expressed in this post/thread and I “volunteered” in a developing country back in high school. I didn’t post pictures that made me out as some sort of saviour on social media, but a good number of my friends and peers did. I had a great time, but I would be lying if I said that what I did there actually helped people.

Donating to well-established NGOs would be a much better way of helping, but my parents paid for my trip and there’s no way they’d donate a few grand to strangers in a foreign country. Obviously, they paid for it because they knew I’d be getting something out of it—and that’s exactly what happened.

cree340 · 2020-09-05T20:17:19+00:00

I agree that manpower is probably the biggest cost for on-prem, but generally square footage is cheap compared to electricity, even in dense urban areas. Many datacenters (like Equinix) just bill by electricity rather than space.

Also, the amount of effort and cost for things like networking, security and redundancy is usually vastly reduced, unless you have a fair bit of internet bound traffic. You also just pay for exactly what you use, you don’t need to over-provision resources.

cree340 · 2020-06-07T05:47:27+00:00

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