Re: questions asked during network engineer interview

[Mel Beckman <mel () beckman org>]

Nick,

SDN works very well even for tiny networks. Look at Ubiquiti’s SDN controller. Yes, it requires proprietary hardware 
(proving SDN isn’t only for commodity hardware). But it can scale a network of a single switch up to hundreds of 
switches with a single point of configuration. You want a new VLAN across the entire network? It’s a couple clicks. 
Want to deploy an new SSID in one department? A few more clicks. It’s very well designed for small- and mid-sized 
networks. 

Bigger networks use other products. But there is an SDN solution off-the-shelf today for every size. 

-mel via cell

> On Jul 21, 2020, at 1:22 PM, Nick Hilliard <nick () foobar org> wrote:
>
> William Herrin wrote on 21/07/2020 20:21:
> > This is happening a lot in the big shops like Amazon that can afford
> > to employ software developers to write purpose-built network code.
>
> IOW, it works if you have a large and homogeneous enough network with a sufficiently narrowly product portfolio that 
> you can justify the cost of getting enough programming skill to make the cost/benefit ratio work.
>
> Some networks are like this; many aren't.
>
> In fairness, most networks would benefit from some degree of automation.
>
> Nick