Networking, Ugh
Blogs make sure that bad ideas die quickly. When I’m bored, I often think of large, lofty, mostly impossible projects to undertake. If I didn’t have a blog, I might actually start some of these. But, I tell myself, “If it’s such a good idea you could at least bust a blog article out about it.” Many of these never make it here for your review, meaning I save time by wasting time.
I’m in such a holding pattern today that I’ve brought stuff down from the “Friday” queue on my to-do list to take care of today. And Wednesday is currently empty! And in the meantime, I started browsing the “New” feed on Reddit because the front page wasn’t changing fast enough (I know).
I read a mediocre article on networking, and I realized exactly how hard it is to get into networking and attain some level of understanding.
I mean, you have the wackiness that is DNS constantly fouling up constantly by way of your incompetent ISP. Registering a domain name feels like buying a Rolex off the inside of a shady guy’s coat. And then you get to find out about A records, TXT records, MX records, CNAMEs, whatever. If your new domain registrar gives you the freedom to look at them. What a mess.
Then you get to local networks, Windows networking, SMB/Samba/“Windows File and Printer Sharing.” And the magical randomness of auto-configured IP addresses, and the understanding needed to configure one manually.
And don’t forget that this is all wrapped over by maybe two decades’ worth of abstraction and obfuscation to make it all “easy.” Apple hands you a crystal ball that works most of the time. Windows hands you a Magic 8 Ball that always comes out with “The network is currently unavailable. Try again later.” Linux says brandon:~ $ .
My original method (c. 1999) for debugging networks was to refresh the “Workgroup Computers” screen in Windows. I think equipment has actually been taken back to the store because this failed to work (the network was likely operational the whole time). I remember a specific print server that consumed a weekend.
Anyway, personal findings from all of this thinking:
- You almost have to administer at least a shared host server to really understand DNS configuration for a domain.
- The only really good way to debug a network is with pings, telnet, ifconfig/ipconfig/netstat/tracert/etc. Maybe even a packet sniffer if you’re desperate.
- DHCP implementations would be much better if retail router/WAP devices allowed an easy way to register devices so they get fixed IP addresses automatically.
- File and Printer Sharing was a horrid implementation mistake. It skews most peoples’ understanding of networks via the “workgroup” concept, which is not really rooted in any useful sense of realism.
- We all depend on networking far too much for so few people to understand it.
- The only thing worse than having a network problem because of a crossover/patch cable confusion is having half your devices correct for this in hardware and the other half fail to correct for it.
- Network printing should have standardized around the JetDirect protocol. Patents, maybe?
- It is really complicated to direct-connect two computers into a LAN. I hear Firewire networking makes this easy, if you have Firewire on both sides and the correct cable to accommodate both sides. Easy.