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  • Human Infrastructure 404: Advocacy Beats Sympathy, a BGP MTU Deep Dive, AI Perspectives, and More

Human Infrastructure 404: Advocacy Beats Sympathy, a BGP MTU Deep Dive, AI Perspectives, and More

Author

Drew Conry-Murray
June 05, 2025

THIS WEEK’S MUST-READ BLOGS 🤓

When it comes to seeking a new job after a layoff, Mike Bushong divides your network of professional contacts into two categories: those who are rooting for you, and those who are actually making a difference. 

In the first category Bushong puts people who say “Let me know how I can help.” He says that’s a nice sentiment, but it doesn’t get you anywhere. In the second category are people who “make introductions with endorsements. They open doors. They give real feedback on specific opportunities.” 

As someone who has said “Let me know how I can help,” I feel a little stung by being in the “nice but ineffectual” category. But I get his point. A vague offer of support isn’t as strong as taking action, such as making a direct introduction bolstered by a serious endorsement.

Mike does put some onus on the person leveraging their network. When you ask for help, he says be specific. “Can you send a strong note of advocacy to this person at this company? Can you reach into this company and get me 15m with this named individual? The more specific, the more likely you get some action.”

There’s good advice here for people who need help, and for people who want to be more effective as helpers. - Drew

A sharp-eyed reader pointed out to Ivan Pepelnjak that Nvidia has replaced Cumulus VX (a virtualized version of the Cumulus network OS) with Nvidia AIR, a cloud-hosted data center simulation platform from Nvidia. At a time when other networking vendors are releasing VM and container-based versions of their NOSs for labbing, testing, and to get familiar with the platform, Ivan  notes “...forcing users to use a cloud product is ridiculous.” Agreed. - Drew 

This post is part history lesson and part protocol analysis. Daniel notes that in the past, BGP implementations would use a Maximum Segment Size (MSS) of 536 bytes for BGP peerings due to recommendations in RFC 791. These days, an MSS of 536 bytes is inefficient. Daniel says one way to deal with that inefficiency is Path MTU Discovery (PMTUD). He writes “With PMTUD, we send as large datagrams as we can and rely on that devices not supporting the size of the datagram, responds back with ICMP packet, specifically Type 3 Code 4 – Fragmentation needed (for IPv4), informing us to send a smaller datagram.” 

However, this comes with a caveat from Daniel: “This works well as long as the ICMP packets can be received.” If for some reason they can’t,  you can end up with an MTU blackhole. Daniel shares Wireshark captures and diagrams to walk through various scenarios in this detailed and instructive post. - Drew

Suresh provides a detailed look at how VLANs differ on UniFi switches compared to what you’d find with Cisco, et. al. His post focuses specifically on the USW-Pro-Max-16 and USW-Lite-8 models. - Drew 

Aidan Finn says the European Union is grappling with the fact that the United States is no longer a trusted political partner. That has IT implications. For instance, if the US decides to renege on data privacy treaties, it could demand access to data on EU companies and citizens hosted by American-owned cloud giants.  

He argues that the EU “needs to establish a native IT ecosystem that is independent of the USA.” What might that ecosystem include? How about an EU Linux distro, or a massive investment in IT R&D, or the construction of public cloud data centers and services to enable migration off of US-owned cloud companies?

I don’t know if such a project is feasible. I do know that it sucks that we’ve arrived at a place where these questions even need to be asked. But Aidan is right to be asking them. - Drew 

Technical certifications and their relevance are a perennial topic of interest in IT. Mike Lossmann, who at one time had 50 active certs(!), shares his opinions on the good and bad of certs in 2025. There’s sound advice here for cert-seekers, but if you’re looking for a quick “Yea or Nay” that’s not this post. Nor should it be. As Mike writes, “No one can tell you what the outlook of certifications are because they are not on your journey, you are. Only you can make that decision because you know what you want to do with your career and how you want it to progress.”  - Drew 

MORE BLOGS

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TECH NEWS 📣

Google’s Chrome browser will no longer trust certificates from a CA in Taiwan and another in Hungary. The Chrome security team cites ongoing compliance failures, unmet promises of improvement, and a lack of meaningful response to incidents. The two CAs getting the “talk to the hand” treatment from Chrome are Chunghwa Telecom and Netlock. - Drew  

MORE NEWS

FOR THE LULZ 🤣

Shared by Anton on the Packet Pushers Community Slack

RESEARCH & RESOURCES 📒

The folks at HexaBuild (who also happen to host the IPv6 Buzz podcast on Packet Pushers), have developed a tool to help you check v6 compatibility for your network hardware. The tool is in trial mode and they are looking for feedback, so if you have a few minutes, maybe give it a try and let them know what you think. There’s a suggestion box at the bottom of the page linked above where you can share your thoughts. - Drew  

This is a 340-page slide deck, comprised of charts and some text, by Mary Meeker and team. Mary Meeker is a well-known analyst now turned VC. The deck tracks AI trends including adoption, costs, business models, the competitive landscape, AI’s potential impacts on work, and more. It’s a beast of a deck that aims to collect information rather than draw conclusions. It will probably be an interesting artifact in five years when AI has altered tech, the economy, and society in ways we have not anticipated. - Drew 

Jefferies is an investment bank. Sometimes they share in-house research or highlights of events. This post is a summary of observations from Jefferies’ 2025 Private Growth Conference that included bankers, investors, and other high-rollers. The big takeaway is that big money is bullish on AI because they see AI as a way to make their money even bigger.

There’s a whiff of hype here; for example, consider this quote: “I was just talking to a CFO…his business grew more in the last five days than it had in the past year, driven by an AI algorithm that just started to work.” Frankly, that sounds like bullshit. Maybe there’s a magical AI algorithm capable of producing immediate, cancer-like growth rates out there, but color me skeptical.

In any case, it’s clear that AI is now firmly implanted in the minds of this community as A Thing That Is Happening, and if you aren’t on board, you are already behind. 

The summary concludes with this statement: “For companies and investors, the real work now lies in building the systems, talent, and discipline needed to put that power to use in a measurable way.” The key word in this conclusion is “measurable.” To my mind, that’s an acknowledgement from Jefferies that right now AI is all about potential. Maybe next year we’ll see about returns. - Drew 

MORE RESOURCES

INDUSTRY BLOGS & VENDOR ANNOUNCEMENTS 💬 

The Network Automation Forum (NAF), which puts on the AutoCon network automation conference, would be delighted if you’d take a few minutes to participate in its “State of Network Automation” survey. Even if you aren’t neck-deep in automation, NAF wants to hear from you: “This survey is for anyone who operates a network—meaning you have edit ('enable') access to switches, routers, firewalls, or optical transport equipment on a production network, or you lead a team that does. All experience levels welcome!” - Drew 

Axiom, which makes optical transceivers, has announced its QDD-400G-ER4 40km optical transceiver is fully compatible with Juniper QFX5240-64QD, a 400G data center switch. From the press release: “The Axiom QDD-400G-ER4 is engineered for long-reach, high-capacity data transmission, supporting distances up to 40 kilometers over single-mode fiber (SMF). With its compliance to the QSFP-DD MSA and 400GBASE-ER4 standards, the transceiver delivers exceptional performance, reliability, and interoperability in demanding hyperscale and enterprise environments.” - Drew 

MORE INDUSTRY NOISES

DYSTOPIA IRL 🐙

TOO MANY LINKS WOULD NEVER BE ENOUGH 🐳

LAST LAUGH 😆

Shared by Kaj on the Packet Pushers Community Slack