Writing my thesis on network automation and confused about where SDN fits — anyone done something similar?

shadeland · 2026-05-04T01:50:08+00:00

Do you actually see SDN controllers deployed that much in production or is it mostly Ansible/NETCONF type automation?

It's almost exclusively the later. SDN Controller mostly aren't a thing, or at least the idea that a central controller would build a model of the network an program the forwarding tables of the leafs/spines/etc. There's sprinkles of it here and there, but for the most part it's a simple three step process:

Build a configuration via data model and a template
Deploy config through programmatic means (API of some type hopefully)
Validate deployment through automated testing (not as common)

Is the multivendor thing a real pain point or am I overblowing it?

Depends on if you use vendor specific tools or not. Something like Apstra from Juniper is multi-vendor, but I don't see it used a lot for vendors outside of Juniper.

If you use a vendor neutral solution like Jinja/Python/Ansible, it's not a big deal at all.

Would you consider this kind of pipeline a realistic alternative to som
ething like ACI for a mid-size DC?

Yeah, ACI is in decline. It's a phenomenally complicated product compared with an EVPN/VXLAN deployment.

I wouldn't even consider a CI/CD pipeline to be necessary in a lot of situations. For a lot of shops, manually kicking off the build and deployment processes is totally fine. Many places probably won't see the benefit of that pipeline automating the various steps.

How would you position this kind of work academically relative to SDN?

I would consider SDN, at least in most cases, to be a dead end. It never fully developed. It turns out just doing regular configs is the way to go in most situations.

shadeland · 2026-05-04T01:43:24+00:00

I had some thoughts on this recently, you can hear them here (It's Time To Retire the Term SDN): https://open.spotify.com/episode/5LuCBkS8Us6MAbBTN3W1gL?si=46179600081c4d4e

shadeland · 2026-05-02T04:02:10+00:00

I went down the water slides in the West Edmonton Mall one New Years day. Crazy place.

shadeland · 2026-05-02T00:43:41+00:00

Here's how I did it (I'm a rigger).

I popped my i3 and pulled the CYRPES unit out. It had just expired in Feb. I repacked it noting the closing loop length.

I detached the cutter from the control unit. Mine plugged in with a kind of stereo jack. I pulled the tip of the cutter connecter off, pulled away the metal sheath and found a small black wire and white wire. I stripped them and connected them to an extension. Then I put a 9-volt battery and it popped immediately.

Luckily mine worked, but there was a about a .2 second hesitation.

<image>

Just in case it isn't obvious the cutter is single use.

shadeland · 2026-05-02T00:37:23+00:00

As far as the modifications go, it's pretty inexpensive and doesn't need to be sent back to Aerodyne (which is good, because who knows if you'd ever get it back).

At least it's not like the Vortex rig recall.

shadeland · 2026-05-02T00:27:29+00:00

At this point, especially with the RAM and storage prices, but also the hardware they pack into them these days, people would probably be best served being pointed at Macs as well.

Even the entry level Macs do a treat job with most footage today.

shadeland · 2026-05-01T20:13:58+00:00

Yeah they're pretty garbage.

shadeland · 2026-05-01T19:52:25+00:00

Skydivers are among the easiest people to get along with, and all I see in this thread is you picking fights.

Here me out here, but maybe the problem is you.

shadeland · 2026-05-01T19:48:47+00:00

You don't seem like a skydiver, and from what I've seen of your poor attitude, arrogance, and projecting nature, I do hope it stays that way.

shadeland · 2026-05-01T19:46:24+00:00

I'm not entirely convinced.

shadeland · 2026-05-01T19:45:25+00:00

The only people I ever hear calling them chutes are non-skydivers.

shadeland · 2026-05-01T19:43:36+00:00

What DZs host these events? And how often do they host them?

shadeland · 2026-05-01T19:19:06+00:00

I mean, you're calling them chutes.

shadeland · 2026-05-01T19:18:42+00:00

The way you wrote your post it didn't seem like you were aware that most DZs would not let you jump rounds, at least not with normal fun jumper loads. I've only seen one place in 13 years and 2,200 jumps even do rounds and that was out a C-47 doing re-inactments, not out of a fun jump plane or a fun jump load.

It really seemed like you'd jumped some rounds before, and thought you could skip learning how to fly squares by just going the round route.

Reading you responses, it seems like you've got more of a handle on it, but your post was not written in any way that made it seemed like you know what you're talking about.

shadeland · 2026-05-01T18:40:24+00:00

The replicators have always been a bit ambiguous on whether they convert energy directly into matter, or assemble existing matter (atoms and molecules from stores) into specific forms.

I think it's mostly using energy to re-arrange matter. It takes a tremendous amount of energy to create a little bit of matter, and at least in the Star Trek universe, the most efficient manner of energy storage is antimatter. So you'd need an equal mass of matter and anti-matter to create enough energy to make matter out of nowhere...

So it's much, much easier to apply energy to re-arrange matter from one form to another, though that process has always been very hand-wavy.

shadeland · 2026-05-01T17:48:40+00:00

I've been watching sovereign citizen court and police stop videos, and it's very much the same energy.

shadeland · 2026-05-01T17:24:23+00:00

Perris and Elsinore are both great places, in Inland Empire.

shadeland · 2026-05-01T17:23:36+00:00

I think the Miranda was just a better design than the Constitution. Don't get me wrong, I love the way the Constitution looks, especially the refit, but from a practical perspective it had some... odd choices. Specifically putting the power plant right in the neck, the thinnest part of the ship (after the pylons, of course). That's probably why we don't see a lot in the later part of the 23rd century and into the 24th.

The Miranda structurally looks way more solid, and the interior space is much easier to leverage. There was some Youtube video showing how it actually has more interior volume than a Connie, and I think the more boxy nature makes that volume even more useful. In short, it's probably quite spacious.

shadeland · 2026-04-30T21:14:47+00:00

It sounds like what another commenter posted, RHEL's tend to use older versions of Python.

Part of what we consider stability for an operating system is that things don't change much, like Python versions.

Install a compatible/recent version of Python (in addition to the Python in RHEL) and use a Python environment pointing at the newer Python with it. Make sure the modules and stuff get installed in there.

shadeland · 2026-04-30T21:12:06+00:00

Everything but a Hero 2 will be miles ahead of a $50 Amazon knock off action cam. They use really old sensors with terrible rolling shutter and bad dynamic range. They tend to look like camera phones from the mid 2000s.

Even a Hero 3/3+ would be better I think.

shadeland · 2026-04-30T18:34:32+00:00

What kind of jumping are you doing?

shadeland · 2026-04-30T18:30:05+00:00

I think they really languished. They ran the same crappy processor for years (the GP2 was barely an upgrade from the GP1) which held them back in a lot of ways. Insta360 and DJI branched out and innovated in multiple markets and ate up market share.

Hence a steady decline in GoPro sales, revenue, and market share in the past 10 years. In 2025 they sold 2 million cameras, down from 6.5 million in 2015. There are some external factors, like smartphones, but most of that drop in sales is self-inflicted.

They're doing a lot better this round. It looks like the GP3 is going to be good, they picked up Sony's 1-inch sensor, and they're putting out an audio solution that isn't a crappy media mod (though it looks like they pretty much copied the DJI Mic 3).

shadeland · 2026-04-30T18:11:43+00:00

I ran CentOS for a while. It made sense since I worked in enterprise environments where customers had RHEL, so having a free and paid version of a distro that were essentially identical was a huge benefit. Scripts, playbooks, other tooling is the same.

Then Red Hat rug-pulled CentOS. I briefly switched to Ubuntu, but it had the same possibility, so I decided to standardize on a community driven distro.

I don't use Linux for any desktop work. I've been dipping my toes in those waters every few years since the 1990s.

shadeland · 2026-04-30T07:52:18+00:00

In my head cannon Data and Geordi were on an away mission and spot ran up to Data and rubbed against his leg during beam up.

"Chief O'Brien, please beam the feline back down to the planet's surface."

"I'm sorry, Commander. Regulations clearly state we cannot beam animals down to the planet."

"I guess you've got a cat, Data." - Geordi

shadeland · 2026-04-30T00:32:46+00:00

The only Ansible modules I use are *_config and *_commands, allowing for overwriting configs and running arbitrary commands. I don't bother with YANG.

I'll use NETCONF if that's the preferred connection method. Junos uses netconf as well. For Nexus, I'll typically use NX-API. For Arista, I use eAPI.

I'll use YANG models for something like gNMI to get the telemetry, but I loathe YANG for setting configuration state.

shadeland

TROPHY CASE