4 ms·

It’s because practical experience with technologies like BGP is difficult to acquire without sufficient capital to run a network. You can of course purchase a /

It’s because practical experience with technologies like BGP is difficult to acquire without sufficient capital to run a network. You can of course purchase a /24 and dabble (search HN for blog posts describing exactly that). And you can experiment with large deployments in simulators. But network optimization is inherently more of a practical pursuit than a theoretical one, so most broad and consistent learning opportunities are siloed to large organizations where you can accrue daily experience with the stack. This is really unfortunate, and I mostly blame Cisco and Juniper. They suffocated an entire academic discipline with obfuscated terminology driven more by their business models than anything resembling the OSI model or open standards. That’s why WireGuard feels like such a breath of fresh air after 20 years of L2TP/IPSec. I applaud companies like Cloudflare and Fly.io for their openness in sharing techniques and open sourcing so much of their code. It goes a long way toward lowering the barriers to self-teaching and experimenting with the latest networking software. And I’m sure HR is happy about the increasingly large applicant pool of qualified networking engineers – even if some hires do eventually leave by advertising their resume to anyone who sends them an IPv6 trace-route :)

RF_Savage 4y ago
44Net and hamnet are also interesting to those with radio amateur licenses. Many folks run their own AS an BGP in that range.
lawrenceyan 4y ago
You can contribute to the Solana core tech team, with the incentive alignment of underlying token value as a partial backer! I think they're doing some really cool stuff on the network optimization level. As an example, Solana recently implemented QUIC in its latest release: https://github.com/solana-labs/solana/projects/74 https://github.com/solana-labs/solana/projects/74
- jhugo 4y ago
  Are they still using that hand-wavy "cryptographic proof that a duration of time has passed"?
  - lawrenceyan 4y ago
    Do you mean Proof of History? The concept is made concrete in Solana, but actually any blockchain that hashes a set of transactions in each of its successive slots/blocks can be used to prove that time has passed. You can verifiably be assured of a temporal ordering between transactions that were hashed in different slots because the output of a slot/block is hashed and used as an input for the next block/slot.
    - jhugo 4y ago
      Solana claims to prove that a certain duration of time has passed, which is a different and much stronger claim than just temporal ordering. The details of their claims, last I heard (which was some talks in Berlin years ago) were extremely hand-wavy and apparently not well understood even by some people working on the project.
  - spencerchubb 4y ago
    What we care about is getting all the nodes to agree on what order the transactions occurred (aka "Proof of History"). And Solana's goal is to reach that agreement quickly, that's why they call themselves the most performant blockchain. So how does Solana introduce a concept of "time" without relying on a central authority? Solana uses a "hash that runs over itself continuously with the previous output used as the next input". Performing a hash over and over again takes some time. Then, someone can quickly verify that this "time" has occurred. The verification of the hashes can be parallelized on a GPU, which makes the verification extremely quick. https://medium.com/solana-labs/proof-of-history-a-clock-for-blockchain-cf47a61a9274 https://medium.com/solana-labs/proof-of-history-a-clock-for-...
xhrpost 4y ago
> search HN for blog posts describing exactly that Know any offhand? Search is a bit tough for a common number like 24. The concept sounds interesting
- chatmasta 4y ago
  Oh wow you’re right - and neither “autonomous system” nor “AS” are much better keywords! I think this post from 2017 [0] is the one I’m remembering, but I’m pretty sure I saw another one more recently and now I can’t find it (edit: skitter found it! see sibling comment) “BGP” is a signal-yielding search [1]. And any post from benjojo’s blog [2] is always a must-read. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15727115 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15727115 [1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=BGP%20&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=benjojo.co.uk https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=benjojo.co.uk
  - xhrpost 4y ago
    Thanks!
- skitter 4y ago
  A quick search turned up https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30178655 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30178655
867-5309 4y ago
it's ipv6 so a /120 would do!
- icedchai 4y ago
  You can easily obtain a /44 and your own ASN as an individual, through various RIPE LIRs, no questions asked. If you're in the US, you'll have to procure an overseas VPS so you have a European presence.
  - xiwenc 4y ago
    Yesterday i was watching LSD documentary (https://www.netflix.com/title/80229847 https://www.netflix.com/title/80229847). They briefly stated that LSD usage in California was very likely to have accelerated invention of computers. It helped people with problem solving.
    - ShamelessC 4y ago
      How is that relevant?
samstave 4y ago
Fun Fact ; I'm not sure if it was RIP or BGP, but a certain Cisco Founder stated that they wouldnt have come up with the routing protocol if it weren't for Hoffman and LSD.
- riekus 4y ago
  Would love to read more about this.
- ChuckNorris89 4y ago
  I really have no idea what any of those acronyms mean.
  - LtdJorge 4y ago
    The drug
    - nyc_data_geek1 4y ago
      RIP = Routing Information Protocol BGP = Border Gateway Protocol LSD = Lysergic Acid Diethylamide
jhugo 4y ago
I think consolidation has also lead to this knowledge/experience, at least among younger engineers, being siloed in larger companies rather than spread out among many smaller companies. I started in the industry when the Internet was still relatively new, and at that time most companies I worked with had their own ASN & address space and were running BGP, whereas nowadays most companies just use the cloud.

RF_Savage 4y ago

44Net and hamnet are also interesting to those with radio amateur licenses. Many folks run their own AS an BGP in that range.

lawrenceyan 4y ago

You can contribute to the Solana core tech team, with the incentive alignment of underlying token value as a partial backer! I think they're doing some really cool stuff on the network optimization level. As an example, Solana recently implemented QUIC in its latest release: https://github.com/solana-labs/solana/projects/74 https://github.com/solana-labs/solana/projects/74

jhugo 4y ago
Are they still using that hand-wavy "cryptographic proof that a duration of time has passed"?
- lawrenceyan 4y ago
  Do you mean Proof of History? The concept is made concrete in Solana, but actually any blockchain that hashes a set of transactions in each of its successive slots/blocks can be used to prove that time has passed. You can verifiably be assured of a temporal ordering between transactions that were hashed in different slots because the output of a slot/block is hashed and used as an input for the next block/slot.
  - jhugo 4y ago
    Solana claims to prove that a certain duration of time has passed, which is a different and much stronger claim than just temporal ordering. The details of their claims, last I heard (which was some talks in Berlin years ago) were extremely hand-wavy and apparently not well understood even by some people working on the project.
- spencerchubb 4y ago
  What we care about is getting all the nodes to agree on what order the transactions occurred (aka "Proof of History"). And Solana's goal is to reach that agreement quickly, that's why they call themselves the most performant blockchain. So how does Solana introduce a concept of "time" without relying on a central authority? Solana uses a "hash that runs over itself continuously with the previous output used as the next input". Performing a hash over and over again takes some time. Then, someone can quickly verify that this "time" has occurred. The verification of the hashes can be parallelized on a GPU, which makes the verification extremely quick. https://medium.com/solana-labs/proof-of-history-a-clock-for-blockchain-cf47a61a9274 https://medium.com/solana-labs/proof-of-history-a-clock-for-...

xhrpost 4y ago

> search HN for blog posts describing exactly that Know any offhand? Search is a bit tough for a common number like 24. The concept sounds interesting

chatmasta 4y ago
Oh wow you’re right - and neither “autonomous system” nor “AS” are much better keywords! I think this post from 2017 [0] is the one I’m remembering, but I’m pretty sure I saw another one more recently and now I can’t find it (edit: skitter found it! see sibling comment) “BGP” is a signal-yielding search [1]. And any post from benjojo’s blog [2] is always a must-read. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15727115 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15727115 [1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=BGP%20&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=benjojo.co.uk https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=benjojo.co.uk
- xhrpost 4y ago
  Thanks!
skitter 4y ago
A quick search turned up https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30178655 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30178655

867-5309 4y ago

it's ipv6 so a /120 would do!

icedchai 4y ago
You can easily obtain a /44 and your own ASN as an individual, through various RIPE LIRs, no questions asked. If you're in the US, you'll have to procure an overseas VPS so you have a European presence.
- xiwenc 4y ago
  Yesterday i was watching LSD documentary (https://www.netflix.com/title/80229847 https://www.netflix.com/title/80229847). They briefly stated that LSD usage in California was very likely to have accelerated invention of computers. It helped people with problem solving.
  - ShamelessC 4y ago
    How is that relevant?

samstave 4y ago

Fun Fact ; I'm not sure if it was RIP or BGP, but a certain Cisco Founder stated that they wouldnt have come up with the routing protocol if it weren't for Hoffman and LSD.

riekus 4y ago
Would love to read more about this.
ChuckNorris89 4y ago
I really have no idea what any of those acronyms mean.
- LtdJorge 4y ago
  The drug
  - nyc_data_geek1 4y ago
    RIP = Routing Information Protocol BGP = Border Gateway Protocol LSD = Lysergic Acid Diethylamide

jhugo 4y ago

I think consolidation has also lead to this knowledge/experience, at least among younger engineers, being siloed in larger companies rather than spread out among many smaller companies. I started in the industry when the Internet was still relatively new, and at that time most companies I worked with had their own ASN & address space and were running BGP, whereas nowadays most companies just use the cloud.