The Art of Network Engineering
Join us as we explore the world of Network Engineering! In each episode, we explore new topics, talk about technology, and interview people in our industry. We peek behind the curtain and get insights into what it's like being a network engineer - and spoiler alert - it's different for everyone!
For more information check out our website https://artofnetworkengineering.com | Be sure to follow us on Twitter and Instagram as well @artofneteng | Co-Host Twitter Handle: Andy @andylapteff
The Art of Network Engineering
Reach For The Stars
Have you ever wondered what happens when the networks we build leave Earth's atmosphere? In this mind-expanding conversation with Lexi Cooper, Network Integration Engineer at Blue Origin, we explore the extraordinary world of rocket networking and witness firsthand the emotional impact of watching your work launch into orbit.
Lexi's journey defies conventional career paths—from hating her previous job to discovering networking at community college, live streaming her CCNA studies on Twitch, and landing at Blue Origin through what she calls "pure luck" when someone noticed her social media posts about BGP. Her story proves that intellectual curiosity and a willingness to learn publicly can propel careers to literal new heights.
We dive deep into the unique challenges of aerospace networking that terrestrial engineers rarely consider: the weight constraints that limit redundancy options, the extreme temperature fluctuations without air cooling, radiation testing for components, and the absolute necessity for deterministic networking when human intervention is impossible after launch. Lexi explains how every engineering decision becomes a complex risk assessment when the stakes include billion-dollar missions.
For aspiring rocket network engineers, Lexi offers invaluable advice: master networking fundamentals through certifications like CCNA, don't be intimidated by seemingly impossible job requirements, and develop a deeper understanding of the lower networking layers most engineers never explore. She emphasizes that no one is ever fully qualified for these unique roles—what matters most is demonstrating passion, adaptability, and a relentless desire to understand how things work.
Ready to expand your professional horizons? Join us for this inspiring conversation that will change how you think about networking and perhaps open doors to career possibilities you never imagined. Whether you're looking to break into aerospace or simply seeking fresh perspectives on your current role, this episode delivers insights that transcend terrestrial boundaries.
Discover how technology is reshaping our lives and livelihoods.
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This is the Art of Network Engineering, where technology meets the human side of IT. Whether you're scaling networks, solving problems or shaping your career, we've got the insights, stories and tips to keep you ahead in the ever-evolving world of networking. Welcome to the Art of Network Engineering podcast. My name is Andy Lapta and I am your co-host. I am your host, your co-host, and my job here is to try to use the power of communication to tell a story right. Some stories are so profound, Some stories are so inspiring Words fall short. So I'm going to try a different intro here and, if you'll indulge me for 90 seconds, I'm going to see if this works and we're just going to watch something and then, when we're done watching this, I'm going to introduce our guest and ask her what this was like. New Glenn is ready for launch of Blue Ring Pathfinder. This is our first flight and our key objective today is to reach orbit safely.
Speaker 2:GSM on flight level. Take water start.
Speaker 1:Three, two, 1, to power. Now passing, got to orbit safely. Congratulations, blue Origin.
Speaker 3:Y'all have are with us.
Speaker 1:Ladies and gentlemen, Lexi Cooper, what was it like watching your network go to space?
Speaker 3:It was surreal. I'm going to be completely honest, that particular night. We had already scrubbed once, right before that, a day or two before that, and then that particular night I was like, oh, we're probably going to scrub again. I don't really expect, you know. And so I was. I was live streaming with a friend, believe it or not, on Twitch. We were just hanging out talking about cybersecurity and networking and we were just like, oh, we'll hang out and watch it. And then when I realized like, oh shit, it's going to go, I was like, hey, I taught Tibbs His name is Tiberius. I had to go. I was like I'm leaving and I left the stream live and just went to watch it on the big screen with my partner and I cried like a baby, baby. It was surreal, dude. I'm very proud, I'm still very proud of that. It was quite a night.
Speaker 1:You've been on a bunch of shows. You've been a host on the Art of Network Engineering. I heard you on Pack of Pushers. I think you've told your story enough times so we can touch on that if we want. But for people living under a rock who don't know you, I mean you hated your old career and jobs. You moved back home, you went to community college, you discovered network engineering. You got the bug, which is my favorite part of every story, that part when somebody is like, oh my god, this is how it works. Like holy shit, um, you got a job at a knock, an incredible knock at the ibm cloud place. And then somebody saw you on twitter at blue right and saw your pure luck, absolute, pure luck.
Speaker 3:I'm so, so lucky that that happened.
Speaker 1:Yeah, somebody just saw me on twitter, so but but you were live streaming, I think another. So I a little bit of research. I listened to your pack of pushers episode today and I remember you mentioning that I think you're live streaming.
Speaker 3:You're studying the most boring thing a person could live stream is studying for the ccmp.
Speaker 1:I watched you imagine, but I watched them. I used to love watching your stuff. I loved watching you yell at cisco press. It was my favorite thing in the world because it's what I have heard.
Speaker 1:That's cathartic yeah it's what I've been thinking every time I read those books. It's what I've thought forever like oh my god, the grammar. And oh my god that you're still talking about the illustration 15 pages back. I gotta look at like you people are driving me crazy. So listening to you do it on the streams, I'm like, yes, give us a voice. You know, but I guess they discovered you kind of there, was that? Yeah, I.
Speaker 3:So I've finally cleared it up because it's my, my mentor now at work, like I've been working with him ever since Right, and like I finally, you know talked to him about the full story Cause I.
Speaker 3:I listened to him tell someone else you in like yeah, this is the person who brought me in. How did he find you? So he was, uh, as he tells it, he was actually. This is so. This is so old school. I love it.
Speaker 3:He was on irc like message board, right, and someone else actually saw my twitter posts and posted that to the irc and that is how he found me. So, just very legit. Um, yeah, so that's how he found he was. He basically, I think he tells it like yeah, I saw like you're you were like shit posting about bgp and how annoyed you were with it. And I thought, yeah, this person probably needs to know some stuff about bgp to be complaining about it this much. So then you know he. He messaged me on twitter and was like, hey, if you're interested, because I had the NASA thing in my profile. He's like, hey, if you're interested in working in aerospace as an airwork engineer, here's some stuff you can look into. And I was like, whoa, that's cool, thanks for letting me know. We had a little conversation and a month or two later they had an opening for an airwork engineer and he approached me and was like hey, you should apply and you mentioned you didn't think they were going to get the job.
Speaker 3:You're like this is ridiculous no, and I actually told them I did a first round interview with them of just like sort of a general not really super technical, just a general talk with him and my you know potential future manager, and afterwards you know they were great. But afterwards I was like there's no fucking way I can do this and I emailed them it like I would like to respectfully withdraw because I don't think I'm right for this. And they both emailed me back separately and they were like could you maybe reconsider though?
Speaker 1:And that's because you didn't feel ready. You were relatively new in career. It was a terrifying job, breck dude.
Speaker 3:It was a terrifying job Breck, and that's the time when I realized fully and truly it is true job wrecks are all wish lists for the ideal, perfect candidate. They're not actually what you have to have to get the job.
Speaker 1:Was there a thing that they were like we don't care that she's two and a half years in career and just got her CCNA, we we're going to bring her on and we're going to send new Glenn to Mars?
Speaker 3:Oh like why they chose me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like what I mean. So to your point, from your perspective, you're like whoa, this is terrifying, I'm not ready for this. They saw something in you, apparently, that you either didn't see in yourself or it just wasn't clear to.
Speaker 3:I still struggle to see it. If I'm being 100% honest, I still often feel unqualified for this position that I've been in for almost four years now. But you know, I've heard him say some things. Like you know, the important stuff he saw right. Like there's no way and I can talk about this more if you guys want, because it's an interesting perspective but like you can't really be fully qualified for this job. Like it's like he wasn't even. He didn't have the experience that the ideal perfect candidate would have when he came on board.
Speaker 1:And he's the one that signed the network on the rock. Are any of us ever fully qualified for any of these jobs? Right, good point, that's a think I belonged. I didn't think I could get in All the things you've said over the years, which I think is just why I've always been such a big fan of yours. I'm like yes, yes, yes, like it's entirely my story, and then, years later, to find ourselves in these roles. They're terrifying to even think about, let alone say yes, to let alone try enough to open ourselves up to failure and like all that stuff. It's just but.
Speaker 1:But there is, and again, we've spent years on this show, I think, trying to distill, you know, the first hundred episodes. We're interviewing a hundred people on, like what? How do you do it? What's the secret sauce? Right, and I don't know if we've ever gotten to it, but there seems to be a core, like being a learner, right? I think, like you showed, that's that's it. I think, yeah, yeah, you have to be like open to new ideas, being willing to learn, being willing to fail, and I think you learning publicly was brilliant in hindsight because, yeah, what?
Speaker 2:else is better, right, william? Like if you're gonna take there, I think, I mean, if I don't I don't know anything about the nfl draft or these draft processes except the nhl draft. I like hockey, but it's almost like a draft like you're drafting for a team, the right team, you know. If you see someone out there that's thirsty, they're hungry. You can actually see their thought process and the way they're learning and they're throwing stuff out there and hey, if they don't know it, they're reaching out, they're trying to figure it out. You can see that hunger, hunger. You can see that thirst.
Speaker 3:I'd take that any day of the week over someone that knows everything, that already has it all figured out that's the consistent thing that I've heard from more experienced folks and also that I've come to realize myself when I start looking for people, that I would you know, because we're we're high, we're higher into networking positions every once in a while. Right and like. That's what I look for too. So it's. I think the term that I like to use the most to describe that is intellectual curiosity. You don't stop wanting to know why, why, why, why? Why In my previous career that I hated, I got in trouble. I got like written up basically or whatever the adult version of that is, I don't know for like asking why. I'm sorry I have so much disdain still for that there's a demerit there's trauma in there.
Speaker 3:you can hear it my voice, um, but yeah, I I always wanted to know why, I wanted to understand. And I'm I'm not a savant, I'm not genius, I don't think I'm really that smart, but I just keep digging into that rabbit hole, like going down and like learning things. And that is really the key, like, if you want that, if you have that passion, then this is a good place for you to be and that's what people look for. Right, because you can be taught. Things like technical stuff you can learn, right, as long as you have that attitude, that learning attitude can learn right as long as you have that attitude, that learning attitude.
Speaker 1:I always thought everybody was good at the same things. I thought that my struggles in career, let's say was because I didn't have the thing that all the people had right. As it turns out, our friend mike turned me on to now discover your strengths, which is this book, and I realized like, oh, people are good at different things, but the good news is, you know, you have you have, I mean honestly, you know. It's like the fingerprint, like, oh, we're all special, right, but like we all have these unique combination of talents that are valuable in the business world and getting a job.
Speaker 1:I have been plagued by curiosity my whole life. And I say plagued because, like, it never ends right. I go down every rabbit hole and it's not super efficient If I have to learn the thing, and then I get interested in all this other cool stuff. Well, man, I've learned a lot of other things. And then they're like, did you learn the thing yet? I'm like dude, but let me tell you about these other 14 things that are related. So relatable, andy. Right, I know, but curiosity is magical, I think in this, like how we're talking here, like if you're going to hire, like my wife had a thing. She played at a high level in basketball and she always had this saying, which I love you can't teach hustle. There's players who are going to dive on the ball, jump on the ground, wrestle for it, and then there's players who were never going to do that and you can never teach an athlete to hustle right. And curiosity, I mean, I don't want to say you can't teach curiosity, but the curious people I know, like myself and you two, it's just a fire you can't stop. I don't know that you can teach curiosity. I don't know if you can. I don't want to say you can't, but it doesn't appear to me you can. So my wife love her to death, married her best wife, mother in the world. She is not curious about almost anything, it's just not one of her strengths. She's amazing at what she's good at.
Speaker 1:So again, I think that I'm amazed at your story and I'm amazed that curiosity and being willing to learn in public seem to be some secrets, those secrets we're trying to share with the world, with the community. Right, what can I do to do the thing or learn the thing? Or, like man we've always said, create content. Get out there, be vulnerable, do something. You're streaming yourself learning yelling at a book, like if you look at that on, I can't believe people watch that. I loved it. But if you looked at it on paper you're like that's yeah, because I've had super nerds like go learn math and calculus. Like you don't need to create content. Okay, well, that's your path. But like right, that's not my strength. I'm a communicator and so anyway, I know we're kind of I lost.
Speaker 2:Talk about paying off to, like, seeing that rocket launch, like, if you think about, like, okay, like I remember this one data center project I did, you know, refresh some hardware, configure, you know, by the time it was done, I'm just like I'm out of here. I don't want to see a router, you know. Is it, you know, building or just doing anything that contributed to that thing going into space? I can't imagine the feeling.
Speaker 3:I can't describe it. Yeah, it was. It was, and I'll tell you what. I can't go into details, obviously, but like the one to two weeks leading up to that launch were like the most insane I felt in my entire life, like in any career I've had it starts to close in right, Like we're getting.
Speaker 1:It wasn't even.
Speaker 3:I can't even I wish I could get into it, but it's just like you know, technical stuff comes up, you know, and it's a week before launch, um, so it's, you know it. It that launch was, I mean, the culmination of my career so far. I would say it was, it was, and we did it. I'm sorry, I'm just if I could just brag, we did it perfectly, it was perfect, you know. So obviously there's stuff we want to improve which I can't get into also, but like it's so very, very, very proud.
Speaker 1:So we made it 20 minutes before you said I can't talk about it. No, it's good right. No, no, no, don't be sorry, it's a new renard for me.
Speaker 2:Like, if we mess something up, you know, maybe like some financial, like something happens it's like, oh, this broke and someone couldn't use an application. You mess something up in aerospace and like, oh, that's a problem, you know it's huge impact, you don't want to go there.
Speaker 1:So this is a good segue. I have some. I have some questions that I thought long and hard about, on what Lexi might be able to talk about, and obviously you're going to tell us if you can't. So I think that's a good segue, william, because I thought of, like I don't know design principles right, like how what would be some design decisions you might make in a general term, that like is, on a vehicle that you cannot dispatch to console into there's some autonomous. So in my, in my new role, we, we talk about these adventure of the networks and these autonomous, self-healing kind of things and using some logic to have the logic do the thing instead of feeling right. So I assume in a rocket right. Again, I know we can't talk specifics, but once you light the candle, it's autonomous.
Speaker 3:Oh, yeah, a lot of people. Yeah, I can say that I mean like it's a, it's a. Yeah, I could tell you a little bit about it. It has to be right, like it does. Yeah, it does.
Speaker 1:I mean I'm there's design considerations I guess made like yes, there's redundancy, but there's limited space. Yes, you can build resiliency, but weight is a thing like, so you're under these constraints. Nobody says you can't put that many switches in the data center rack. It's too heavy, but in a rocket right.
Speaker 3:So um, yeah, you're thinking about it exactly the right way and we can tell you. Know, I can't tell you how we solve these problems specifically, but those are absolutely like. You're on the exact right track, right like that's such unique problems to space.
Speaker 1:You've talked about it like with radiation and vibration and like I mean, I went down the rabbit hole today and and thank god I got busy with something else at work and couldn't, but I thought, okay. So like I went nuts about, like all right. So you got packets flowing through. You know, I don't know if it's fiber or copper, she'll never tell us it's fine, but like all right. So like I'm thinking about what Einstein said and warping time and space with like speed and distance and space.
Speaker 1:I'm like no, I went nuts Right. So then I'm thinking like, well, I wonder if, like the speed of the vehicle, you know they might be going 14,000 miles an hour Like does that change how electrical impulses are? Like travel? Like I just can't imagine and again I know you can't talk about it, but just the the crazy cool stuff that you must have to work on and test and check, you know, like, yeah, I don't know how the hell to shield a thing from gamma rays from the sun, and was there a solar burst last week? And oh and like it's all just so amazing to me.
Speaker 3:Like you're thinking about it. I mean, Andy, you're thinking about it like an architect, like a designer, right? That's how you think. You have to think about it, though, right?
Speaker 1:Like you have to sort of like put your, you're putting yourself in the architect, but that was new to you.
Speaker 3:Right, you went from a knock to like, oh yeah, and I let me be clear, I did not design anything right in this network. I am an integrator, which means I take the hardware and the firmware and the software and whatever and I smush them all together and I give all these individual like contributors contributors feedback on how their stuff did and then, if there needs to be tweaks, I test the tweaks, and so on. Right, I test the tweaks and so on.
Speaker 1:Right, but I thought you were like. I always considered you like, oh, like, you're the network engineer on the rocket, but an integrator, I guess, is technically.
Speaker 3:I mean, I am a network engineer by trade, but my my job title is network integration engineer, which means that I, you know, I smoosh everything together and I see how it works. And then all these individual contributors, like I said, we've got embedded software folks, we've got a firmware team, we've got hardware folks. Like I give them all feedback on how the device performed and what the network looked like. And even though I'm not an embedded software engineer or like definitely not an EE, right, like I still can give them useful feedback because I know exactly how the network is expected to perform. And so together we work as a team to figure out how to make it and everything traverses the network on the rocket.
Speaker 1:I'm assuming right, it does. Yeah, like we just. We just had we just had somebody. Like we did cruise ship networking with a guy.
Speaker 1:Well it was kind of neat, right, and he was talking about you know, no-transcript, like oh, I got to talk to the rocket guy because you know his thing has to steer and the nozzle thing. And well, that latency isn't bad. And what about like it round? Well, yeah, on like a whiteboard, like all right, here's what we gotta do, and here's all the constraints, like how do we do this? And then they're all just looking at you like well, okay, I'm lucky enough that I made.
Speaker 3:I actually made a little post about this the other day on socials, and then I was like I should not make this permanent because people for my job are gonna be like lexi, um, but my, I am, I being a designer, so my mentor is the architect of the network, so I didn't design it. He did, though, and so you know, that's why we we did a little talk at cisco live this year, and that's why I was like really the talk, I was there, but like I was trying to get him on stage. So is that the tall guy I met at cisco?
Speaker 3:yeah, eric, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, he rocks, and I've been trying to get him on stage to talk about this stuff and he finally did this year. Um, just a quick little plug. It went great, if any, if it's on demand on on the cisco learning network, uh okay, but anyway, we didn't talk and this is put a link in there.
Speaker 1:I haven't seen that. I'd love to see that. You guys thought that's some rocket stuff oh yeah, we definitely.
Speaker 3:It's called packets in space networking for the final frontier man, I'm sorry I missed that I will.
Speaker 2:That's a title right there.
Speaker 1:I like that what was it packets in space?
Speaker 3:packets in space networking for the final frontier y'all are talking like way cooler stuff.
Speaker 2:Like I, I read this book called the martian like years ago and you know what I thought about like the whole time as I was like reading this book is like man on earth. I could transfer like a jpeg from like Ashburn to Chicago in this amount of time. Well, mars is like like 150 million miles away. I don't know what the exact distance is, something like that. Yeah, and how long would it take to transfer that JPEG to Mars? 28 days.
Speaker 3:It depends on the network you have connecting you to Mars.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:What's your, what's your network doing?
Speaker 2:Well, that's one question I have is like you're we're talking about, like the network on the spacecraft, but do you like? What about everything surrounding the spacecraft?
Speaker 3:yeah, so that's a great, that's a great like. Actually, we should clarify because some people, when I talk to them, get a little confused, understandably, about what network I actually work on. So there's the rocket network and that is my domain, and it is a closed loop network which means, like, for the most part, that data is only flowing like within the rocket, and that's it.
Speaker 1:Right Telemetry.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but we do get telemetry on ground. So there are radios and stuff that like send it to ground in certain ways, right, but for the most part, like it's an autonomous vehicle, it's a closed loop network. All of that is talking. That is my domain. My domain is not the ground network, which we have a whole network engineering team that manages that just in Florida, right, for just the ground network, which in some places does interface with the vehicle network. So you know, I have to work with them.
Speaker 3:And then we've also got like TDRS, which is like the NASA sending data down to ground and how we manage that. And then we've got vehicle recovery. When we recover the first stage, when it comes back down onto the sea, onto the boat, basically like how are we going to recover data right there? Like there's a lot of different networking things that have to be addressed and they're all addressed differently, right, and my domain is solely the rocket. So there's a lot of interesting people to talk to actually out there who know way more than I do about all that other stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I watched something on NASA. Nasa has like this deep space network thing and I watched a YouTube video like it was fascinating. I need to go back and watch it. A lot maybe changed and yeah, yeah, well, nasa has published, published.
Speaker 3:You know nasa has some things that they can't publicly like put out there, but they do have a lot that they can and do, and so anybody who's just like even passing, interested in any of this stuff I do recommend you go watch some stuff or read some stuff about the deep space network and, um, I think, even the european space agency, esa, they've they've published some stuff about, like even, I think, what protocols they have on some of their crafts. So it's an interesting read, like anything you can get about that stuff.
Speaker 1:I. I have some specific questions I want to ask you and to to preempt the you may not be able to talk about it. I've heard you say in other places, publicly, that you're um. You know I can't talk about it because of different um. I don't know if the regulation bodies or whatever, but like I've heard you say ITAR and I don't know what that means. And again I'm curious, so I have to ask.
Speaker 3:I forget what it stands for. It's like international.
Speaker 1:I looked it up as we were talking so international traffic and arms regulations, but like, so, yeah, of course. So when you, when I ask you a question and you say you know I can't talk about that, ITAR, I guess, is one of the regulatory bodies that you have to adhere to in your job, right?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's a, it's federal regular, yeah, so, like the rocket, any rocket that we, if we share that information with a foreign entity, that violates ITAR and that's basically TLDR. Because if you share how to build a rocket, uh, you're sharing how to build a bomb or a missile. Right, a rocket is essentially like a controlled bomb um.
Speaker 1:So if you, if you violate itar like you're going to like, you're going to federal prison yeah, right, like it's no. So yeah, and these things are so high, like what william said earlier. I'm sorry, I mean to talk over you, like you know. Oh no, the data center went down for a minute and somebody couldn't get to an application and use their visa card, like where you're, like you know you.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean, you guys might eventually have humans going to Mars or something or like some crazy thing, and the stakes are so high. Not only that, but also communicating, because you're a public figure and you're a good communicator. You want to be able to share this cool stuff with the world.
Speaker 3:But you want to be able to share this cool stuff with the world, but you also have to be super mindful, because you don't want to go to federal prison. I, I use, I use itar as a. It's a very convenient excuse for not creating very good content online. Like, oh, I can't talk about the interesting stuff because itar no, I, uh, I, it is the reason why I can't share, unfortunately.
Speaker 1:I would love to share all the nitty-gritty details, but I'm gonna have to get a job with lexi if you want to.
Speaker 2:Yeah, learn any of the really cool, yeah, amazing my mind just blew up just thinking about like how like itar would differentiate between like military and commercial space stuff like there. That's got to be such a. I bet the handbook is enormous. There's probably a lot of yeah, and I'll say I.
Speaker 3:I'll say not only am I restricted by ITAR, but also we have some NDAs in place and stuff like that, and so there's proprietary stuff I can't share that may not violate ITAR but would get me fired. So I do paint with a very, very broad brush about everything and if in doubt I just don't share it. And so there might be details that technically I could share, but I'm just not going to risk it type of thing.
Speaker 1:Have you been like called into the principal's office yet of like, hey, OK. No, luckily not no I hear what you can and can't do.
Speaker 3:Yeah, after three, three and a half plus years there, I'm pretty good at like avoiding that stuff In the beginning you just defer to like listen.
Speaker 1:I can't talk about anything like avoiding that stuff, I guess. In the beginning you just defer to like listen. I can't talk about anything. I'm not losing my job, right. I'm going to jail, right, or?
Speaker 3:I'd like message Eric and be like, hey, can I talk about this? And he'll be like no, or yeah, that's fine, or don't risk it. You know, I've learned over the years.
Speaker 1:So my first question you might say no kind of touch on this earlier, but how do you design a network that can recover or adapt without human intervention during flight?
Speaker 3:I mean that's such a good question, andy. I really like that because there's a lot.
Speaker 1:I mean, like that's one of the questions that you ask when you're just but is that like vague enough? Like I mean, you know there's probably redundancy protocol. Like I'm going to try to answer your question for you, which is probably done.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, but like please probably redundancy protocols.
Speaker 1:There's probably dual things right, like physical redundancy and then logical things to, you know, take advantage of the physical things that we do on the ground.
Speaker 3:I would. I answer questions like this because it's a totally valid and interesting question to ask. I answer questions like this with not how we solve these problems, but think about how you might solve it right, because there's not one way to solve these problems or address them right. And something that I've had to learn being in aerospace is everything is kind of just a big risk assessment, like every decision you make ultimately comes down to what's the risk and are we willing to accept that right? So, whatever you decide on whether it's how you address radiation temperature, you know if you want to use redundancy in certain places, how much of it do you want to weigh? You know, is weight okay versus you know better resiliency of the network? Or are we willing to accept the risk of like less weight, less cost, but less resiliency as well?
Speaker 3:You know, like all of that comes down to a bunch of smart people making a decision, or at least analyzing the options and laying them all out in front of leadership and saying here are the benefits, here are the disadvantages, here are the costs associated. What do you want to do? Right and so that's all it is, and it just depends on your company's strategy, your leadership's attitude towards certain things, how they get addressed, and so every company is going to be a little bit different, like we obviously would be very different than other, you know, space rocket making companies.
Speaker 1:I guess the problems no-transcript purchase orders to buy the gear to design the thing, like what corners can we cut? We don't have a bajillion dollars in the budget, right, because nobody wants to spend on the network. It might be different in rockets, but the network is like this necessary evil. It's the roads, it's the plumbing, like oh we just want to spend our money on applications and dev, like the networks are stupid. Cloud made it easy. We don't need you anymore. I mean, I'm being half, like you know, facetious.
Speaker 1:No you're not wrong. So on the ground, when we'd have a big outage and Bank of America would be like what the hell guys Like? Why did this happen? Again, the answer was always somebody made a decision to not spend the money we could have on the resiliency that would have kept this up. Now you can't say that to the client, but that was always the answer Not always generally because you could build enough resiliency in the system, but it's expensive and you're going to have to refresh that expense every five years or whenever this. So again, I know you can't answer it, but it's interesting that that problem on the ground.
Speaker 3:There's not a limited budget, right, like, yeah, it's a similar like risk benefit analysis, going on. The stakes are slightly, you know, a little bit different here and there, but you know we've got other. Some of the differences are interesting to me from a business perspective. I'm not a business guy, right, like I don't. I wouldn't say I understand business decisions and leadership very well, but the things that I have learned have been basically like risk assessment everything does come down to weight, which also basically means it comes down to cost right yeah, um, and of course everybody's trying to save money, especially in like a private company.
Speaker 3:I can't, I'm not speaking as a representative of my company, it's just. This is what I've learned in general about private aerospace right is like it's like that's, that's one of the things that you just have to deal with, and that also means that schedules are tight and things like that. So all of that is kind of pretty familiar, I would guess for most network engineers it just sort of manifests a little bit differently maybe, and like what's prioritized, because in a rocket everything is expensive and you're trying to make it, you know, less expensive in every single possible way you can. But you also, like can't necessarily cut corners, right, like you, but you. So you have to come up with these inventive ways to save money and also get it done.
Speaker 2:Really good, right yeah, and in the network engineering world that you know, andy and I probably lived in for a long time, it's like hey, you want more nines? Hey, double the cost, triple the cost, quadruple. Okay, yeah, we're not gonna do that, we're just gonna go what? What is the cheapest? Okay, like I feel like my, my assumption in aerospace especially, you know name, name the company. If you have something going into space, if you cut corners and it, you know results in rocket going down, then then what is that risk? How is that calculated? That's a big, big. You might as well light a few truckloads of money on fire.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I'll say terrestrial networks and data centers and stuff like that. For the most part you're just typical one. You're probably not going to have a bunch of people, before it ever gets deployed, be running a ton of tests, a ton of working with it ever gets deployed. Be like running a ton of tests, a ton of, like you know, working with the FAA to make sure it's gonna perform in production exactly as you expect it, things like that. Like when we get the rocket on the pad, like I'll say, like when I was, I was stressed out in the weeks leading up to launch. I was not stressed out when we were trying to. Actually, when it was on the pad, I was, I was confident in the network at that point.
Speaker 1:There's a ton of testing, I assume.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, and we have. You know, in aerospace you have requirements. You can't just sort of like build a thing and see if it works right, like you have requirements that you actually. Systems engineers are very important in an industry like this because they have to understand how their individual system fits within the whole. And take the requirements of the large, you know you have requirements for like this large, the rocket basically, and then its requirements trickle down into more specific ones for each little system, the fins, the engines, whatever the flight computers and the network has its own set of requirements. And so you write those requirements and the systems engineer, you know, make sure that in the end your, your little system, performs exactly to those requirements and if it doesn't, it doesn't launch right.
Speaker 2:So yeah, yeah there's amount of like. Maybe like okay, like we test things to make sure they work, maybe we have like burn in. You know, we install a fresh switch or a router, we let it burn in and then we we get it going.
Speaker 3:But I imagine, like in space related things aerospace, like you probably stress, test stuff a lot more than you would do and you definitely, yeah, you definitely have to know the limits of like we, we know, you know generally things like vibration levels, temperature, radiate, like we have a whole radiation team that knows what to expect for different missions that we're going to do, right. And so we definitely choose our components wisely and they're analyzed before we ever commit to actually using them for these purposes, right? So, and then each unit gets tested before it actually is put on the vehicle to make sure it's not defective.
Speaker 1:I'm glad you said that. I thought about that. Today I visited Oak Ridge National Laboratory I forget if it was a year or two ago and we were there to see the Frontier Supercomputer, which is really neat. But a part that we couldn't film or talk about was a nuclear reactor where they made isotopes and part of what they did there. It was fascinating.
Speaker 1:Part of what they did there is they test physical materials and they mentioned rockets so they can shoot neutron bullets from the radioactive whatever through materials. So a company can say, hey, I don't know, here's my spacefaring whatever, I don't know what I'm talking about Right, and tell us how strong this is, and somehow they send the neutron bullets to the material and this cool thing and then they send whatever the results of that test are over to the supercomputer. Do some math and like, okay, you can get 37 launches out of this at these temperatures, at these things. And they can like, tell you with mathematical, like scientific certainty. I think, yeah, you know, based on what you built and what we tested with neutrons, I'm like what? Like, just, you know so, physical material testing.
Speaker 3:Just, I didn't even know it was a thing that's the coolest thing by far that I think I've done so far. Besides, the rocket launch actually is like. I was lucky enough to be basically the test engineer for some components that we were testing radiation this year and I went on a couple trips with our RAD team and I got to see that firsthand and like watch them. You know they definitely do have a profile for each mission. Couple trips with our rad team and I got to see that firsthand and like watch them. You know they definitely do have a profile for each mission. They know exactly what that's. You know, based on the radiation testing, what's going to happen with that component and it is super cool way beyond me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they must have some really cool laptop stickers, just just the name of their team they are awesome.
Speaker 3:they are so smart.
Speaker 2:I learned so much, uh, when I was traveling with them, so that's definitely like something that happens for sure centers in space now, and I just started like laughing at him like yeah, and he's like no, I'm serious, there's a startup and they're shooting data centers in space. I'm like, are you serious? I think it's called like cloud castle or space castle or something. It's legit, though and I was like why would you like? My mind started reeling and I'm like why would I? Don't understand that. Just how do you?
Speaker 1:get the data maxi reynolds subsea, whatever it's called like what about dana gravity? That's like she's putting them on the ocean floor. They're putting them in the ocean oh yeah, that's pretty.
Speaker 3:I've seen that yeah yeah.
Speaker 2:But he was like, yeah, there's well, of course there's no, you know, temperature problems in space. I'm like, oh, that's a good point well, there's definitely temperature problems in space.
Speaker 3:I don't know that that's true, right cooling aspect of it, I guess well, it's cold, but it's also as soon as the sun hits you. There's no air to, there's no cooling. With air, you get super hot and super cold in space. It's. It's a big challenge it is.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's like they're doing crazy stuff in space with technology and and and data centers I have a.
Speaker 2:Let's see what the name of this company is, because I'm curious. Now I can't remember now is it star cloud? Yes, that's it not. Not space, what did I say?
Speaker 3:Space cloud I was trying to remember the name because I definitely heard of them, but yeah, StarCloud.
Speaker 2:It's really interesting. I need to do some digging the place I work at. Thanks Ankit for telling me about that.
Speaker 1:Ankit. I want to talk about telemetry for a second because I know that's really important to space, space vehicles and, um the, the place I work at, they're obsessed with streaming telemetry and they think that everybody should be using gmic and you should know everything about your network all the time. And I just heard a pack of pushes really where they yeah, where they had so it's not a, it's not a product pitch, but yes, everything is streaming telemetry where I work and that's one of their value props. But I just heard a pack of pushes where they kind of had like an snmp verse streaming telemetry face-off of like the SNMP. People are like, do we really need to know what the network's doing all the time? Because SNMP is good enough.
Speaker 1:So it was an interesting conversation. But I guess, in the context of rockets, I think you need real-time streaming telemetry coming in over what I assume is a limited WAN connection. Limited might be underselling how much bandwidth they can do over satellites and all this. It's probably pretty tense, but yeah, so I think of quality of service, right, like, oh, can they stream everything? Do they have to prioritize certain things? And again I feel like I'm dipping into like bro, I can't tell you what we're doing, but these are some of the things I think you're thinking about it, right as usual.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, you've got it right.
Speaker 1:I mean, you need the telemetry to know what the rocket's doing, I think.
Speaker 3:But I can't say.
Speaker 1:What I can't say is like time like do you need it on the ground because the rocket's going to use that about it? Right, and it plays loop and like make adjustments it's autonomous.
Speaker 3:When it's going up, you know we we get a little data coming down to ground as that's happening, but for the most part, you know it's very limited. Um, but, like one of the most interesting things, that uh was so different for me, coming from like a knock, where you, you have this huge like screen of like this is wrong, this is wrong. Ah, we're freaking out because everything is wrong. Right, you, you never get an alert if something's right. Right, like you don't care if it's going right, you just is that what telemetry is for.
Speaker 3:You could see everything's happy I mean, yeah, in aerospace we do want to know the exact everything that's going on with everything all the time, every millisecond, right like we want to know if it's going right, if it's going wrong.
Speaker 1:We need to know immediately if something's wrong feedback loop can, I guess, help you continue to keep everybody safe and the mission you know, successful.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean it's part of you know you may have, but also future too.
Speaker 1:Right, like I think of catastrophes we've had in aerospace and the streaming telemetry started to send information. Before you know, crafts fell apart. Let's say Like oh, you know leading, wing temperature sensors are starting to go crazy. So yeah, let's say like oh, you know leading wing temperature sensors are starting to go crazy.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, is there like micro adjustments you can make? Like say that, like you have the all this data coming in, it's all real time, and there's like a combination of certain things that give you insight and like, okay, this could potentially happen. Like could you, in theory, make adjustments if?
Speaker 1:you have 13 think about that william, the telemetry was telling them the oxygen was disappearing and they were like shit, we need to shut stuff down and go into another thing and put socks and carbon things to like scrub. Like if they didn't have that information coming down from the craft and all the smartest people in that room could like work a problem Like that's what I think is like.
Speaker 2:oh, I feel like I've over amplified that like an idiot, because you have this autonomous gigantic thing in space. It's like what are you gonna do to you know? Yeah, I mean, that's why you have all the good engineering and the lexis of the world that have made sure that everything's like you know.
Speaker 3:I just test stuff. But you know, you've got. You've got a kind of a difference between like piloted vehicles with human beings in them and like an autonomous vehicle, right, because right now we don't there's no people in in the rocket, um, but you know, maybe one day we don't there's no people in the rocket, but you know, maybe one day we don't, you don't know. But yeah, you generally want, even if everything goes well, you still want as much data as possible, because you want to know exactly what was going on and you want to be able to analyze that and, of course, of course, if something goes wrong, you want to know. But it's also useful to have the data about what was going right, you know, and be able to confirm things, or if you want to tweak something later. You know it's constant learning process with this stuff.
Speaker 1:Well, you're testing stuff and you're getting data when you test it and then when you quote unquote test in production, when you light the candle, then you can get that data back Like okay, great, everything we tested happened, we confirmed it. So let's keep doing the good thing.
Speaker 3:So that kind of makes sense too, I guess. Yeah, and you might have heard of the term deterministic networking. Right the safety of critical stuff.
Speaker 1:Determinism is really really important.
Speaker 3:Can you explain deterministic real quick? Yeah, it's basically like I don't know there are ways we can do this in data center and enterprise networking for sure. I don't know. I think there are ways we can do this in data center and enterprise networking for sure, but I wouldn't say like deterministic networking is kind of like you know exactly what your latency is at all times, you know exactly the path that traffic is going to take at all times. Like it is, it is deterministic Right. So, like in data center networking, we can adjust like dynamic routing rules and things like that, to make sure we like we can tweak things or statically set a few things here and there to make sure it takes a certain path.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but it's like the extreme level of that basically right, because it's safety critical stuff, which means like you really really have to be on top of it. You have to know exactly what's going to happen with that data at all times, and nothing unexpected should happen, or at least the chances of anything unexpected happening are so mathematically low that you are confident enough to launch this thing right.
Speaker 2:So it's like you're producing consistent, predictable things, results, I guess, with the same inputs every time, no randomness thrown in that can add variability. Yeah, and there's, like you know, algorithms that people can, can use to.
Speaker 3:There's, like you know, algorithms that people can, can use to like determine, like, how many times out of a million will this fail? Right, like there are for every individual component. Basically, that exists, um, I forget what the term is, but it's like a scale or something that that exists out there, um, and you can, you can take that for every component on a vehicle, theoretically and mathematically calculate how many times out of a million is this rocket going to have a problem, or something like that.
Speaker 1:So that's another thing we use to de-risk, like mean time to failure or something right. I kind of feel like I've put that in like network, it's like a standard.
Speaker 3:It's a standard. There's a handbook. I'm pretty sure NASA uses it. I'm sure you could Google it. If you need to wait to google, I can't remember there's so I know we've been going for a while.
Speaker 1:I want to be respectful of your time. There's two things I have to touch on before we we wrap. But something just occurred to me because I was listening to. I know I keep mentioning it, but I listened to you on another show and you were talking about the ethernet book that you read all 6 000 pages of four times and you're like nobody should read it. It was really hilarious. But something you said was just jumped into my mind was you discovered time-based ethernet or time-triggered ethernet?
Speaker 3:oh yeah, like that right, like that's one of those. Is that a?
Speaker 1:thing in space, like I mean it was developed for safety critical applications.
Speaker 3:It's, it's so interesting. It's like qos, but at layer two kind of is how I would describe it. Um, it it time-triggered ethernet is a proprietary protocol by I think they're called. Tte is the company, um, but it's just like one of. If you start looking into like aerospace stuff or deterministic stuff, you can kind of find protocols like this out there, like nasa will talk about them. I think tte the way I kind of found out about it was like isa, the european space agency I'm pretty sure they posted something about it. Or tte was like oh, we have it on one of our vehicles or something, um, but yeah, it's, it's. I would just describe it very briefly as like qos for layer two. Um, it's very, it's very interesting. It's like ethernet, but more than best effort, right our typical ethernet is best effort.
Speaker 1:Right, it does its best, but it's not gonna guarantee this would give you some kind of guarantee class traffic at layer two, maybe, yeah, okay, that's kind of interesting because time is critical, right like milliseconds matter and yeah.
Speaker 3:So, like it's not, you know, it could also be good for, like, not just aerospace, but maybe like industrial applications or even automotive or something like that, right, so it's just down to your use case. So if you start like looking into this kind of stuff, you'll you'll find protocols like that. It's pretty cool.
Speaker 1:And there's probably so many cool protocols in aerospace that are unique to.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and, and a lot of them are proprietary, unfortunately, or they're so new that the IEEE just came out with them, or something like that, and there's no like. What's crazy to me and what makes me sad, as someone who has ADHD and needs structure to learn, is that there's no certifications to like learn about these things. No one has a course on TTE that I am aware of. You have to go or sorry, yeah, time-triggered Ethernet you have to go to the company that made it and like talk to them and like pay them money to like talk about it, right.
Speaker 1:I'm with you. Same affliction Give me an accredited course and a book and a course I can take.
Speaker 3:Yeah, give me an instructor to just tell me things. Yeah, give me quizzes and tests. I want that right, Please give me structures.
Speaker 1:Don't just give me a book and say good luck.
Speaker 3:Right, that's the most frustrating part about like rabbit holing into some of this stuff is like it's so brand new or just like unexplored. There's no certification paths Like you just have to kind of go into the unknown so we talked about deterministic stuff.
Speaker 2:Is like that pro, you know, time-based ethernet. Is that the whole genesis behind you know this deterministic space communication, I guess?
Speaker 3:no, I think determinism has been around for like a very long time. I'm sure nasa invented this right, like nasa invest invented systems engineering. So I I don't know for sure where determinism came from, but I would suspect it's definitely because of safety critical requirements. But is that.
Speaker 2:What makes the space communication deterministic though that protocol? Is it like part of the process for how you because I mean I like I drive for determinism in my code, like I write code, I have the same inputs and I want the same outputs.
Speaker 3:Unfortunately that doesn't happen, and I think it's how much more complicated freaking space is, and yeah, yeah I mean I would imagine, like I said, tte is like a one protocol out of many that exist that are either like invented with this kind of use case in mind, and I just say, like this is, this is a possibility, this is a potential thing that you could use, depending on your use case, to kind of make your network more deterministic. Oh my God, my dog I'm sorry that was amazing. I thought that was Andy. Is Andy?
Speaker 1:okay, she is fine, I don't know. I heard. I heard it sounded like a Muppet.
Speaker 3:She does this thing where, when she wants attention she rolls around on her back and goes where when she wants attention. She rolls around on her back and goes.
Speaker 1:Remind me her name. Her name is May I apologize, I'm wrapping it up.
Speaker 3:Should I redo that?
Speaker 1:It was amazing, it was great. I love that. I love that May was like Yo enough, tell this guy to shut up. It's been 55 minutes. All right, may, I'm going to wrap it up for May, okay. So second to last thing, security. There are obviously massive security concerns. Everybody's worried about security and networking. Okay, you hack my network and you you know, oh, give me a Bitcoin to unlock your stuff, whatever right when. I guess, if you hack a rocket, you can actually weaponize a controlled explosion bomb, right? So, like, what question am I trying to get out here? I have it written down. Let me look.
Speaker 3:Is security important? Yes, it is Well right. Can I hack the rocket? No, you can't.
Speaker 1:What are the like? So are there unique security considerations beyond the obvious? Like oh yes, you could do terrible things on my rocket? Like so, comparing this to ground networking and security, you know you have to think about your attack vector, your surface, whatever they call it, and you know you might have firewalls and like you got to think like cyber stuff and like I mean, without telling us anything you can't tell us like, do you have to do special things around security for a rocket or is it really just hey, man, this is networking and you secure your network? Like it's a terribly worded question. I'm sorry I can't ask this.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I understand. No, no, no, it's fine.
Speaker 1:I will say it's classified, it's like like it's. I feel like different things that you'd have to do.
Speaker 3:Honestly, regardless of how you would worded it, I will just say the answer is yeah, you definitely have to do some stuff, and that was all I can say.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah Right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm so sorry.
Speaker 1:That's not even access to systems I used. I used to have low level federal clearances and there's the PIVI card and there's a fingerprint scanner and there's a special laptop and there's 13 VPNs Like there's layers of security that you know just to get access to a system. So I guess we can just assume security is we?
Speaker 3:definitely it was designed with security in mind. Yeah for sure, yeah for sure. Yeah, so cybersecurity is a thing that aerospace companies for anybody looking for a job. That's another thing you can look into right.
Speaker 1:So that's, that's a good segue and that's kind of where I wanted to to wrap us up as advice for aspiring rocket networkers or avionics integrators. What advice would you give to a network admin, a network engineer? I mean, think of you at, you know, at a knock or I'm thinking of myself at a knock, right Like I, I teared up and it took all I had not to quiver into a falling ball of mush when I watched new Glenn launch at the beginning of this episode. So like all I ever want to be as an astronaut. So like that, you know, like that's a dream. So anybody out there who has a space dream that also works in tech, do you have any advice, any learning resources? Like what would you tell somebody that's like, hey, man, I love what you do, how can I do the thing? This is amazing.
Speaker 2:Because you're the person.
Speaker 3:I think you're the only one that we can talk to. I think my mentor would be a better person to talk to, but as a quick but, no, no, no, I understand.
Speaker 1:I would love to talk to your mentor. Yeah, I mean, what would you say Like, do you have any advice?
Speaker 3:So yeah, my advice would be there. So there's not really, unfortunately. There's not like kind of like I mentioned before, sort of with like some of these protocols and stuff. There's not really like a certification path that's like here's how you get into aerospace as a network engineer. But honestly, people, people get annoyed with me all the time for saying this but like get a CCNA, like understand network fundamentals, that's so important to literally everything ever being a network engineer, that's thank you, captain, obvious. But like make sure you know the fundamentals and then, if you really want it, just go for it.
Speaker 3:We have job recs like anyone else. Right, just just apply. Because if you look at the job recs on, like on any website, right for career, for I'm trying to avoid naming specific companies, but aerospace companies that might be hiring for spacefaring vehicles there's a number of them out there like, just look at their job recs, for it may not say network engineer, it might say integration engineer or, I don't know, avionics engineer perhaps. But look at the job rec and look what it says and you'll be able to tell whether or not it's like network related. But my advice is like, learn your fundamentals, then go for it. Then, if you're not getting it. Start if you. If you don't, a lot of it's luck, unfortunately, like I got really lucky to be hired the way I did. But I would say, keep applying. There's not going to be a ton of these jobs because, like, we just don't have usually like an army of network engineers on a rocket right, I'm a two-person, I'm on a two-person team right now, but they do, they do exist out there. Just go for it.
Speaker 3:Um, because you're basically you're not going to be able to get a certification to be qualified, you're not really going to feel like you're qualified for it. But just go for it anyway Because you can do it. If you understand networking, you can be a network engineer for a rocket. It might be weird, it might be a weird rocket network, but like, if you can get over that then you're fine, right.
Speaker 3:But as far as like actual skills, if you want to increase your chances of like doing well in an interview we talked about at the beginning Intellectual curiosity, people roll their eyes because we say soft skills all the time in technical spaces. But like you can learn technical stuff, you will have to learn the technical stuff on the job at an aerospace company. There's just no getting around that You're never going to know most of the stuff you need. So if you can demonstrate that you have the ability to not only have passion for that mission, whatever that company is doing, and show them that in the interview and also, like, show that you are interested in this stuff and you think it's cool and you are really ready and willing to learn, that goes a very, very, very, very long way.
Speaker 1:She's amazing. She's had it. I understand I kept you too long, I'm sorry. Listen, I think that's fantastic advice and I'm glad I don't think that it's obvious. In the beginning I've heard people try to undermine and undersell the value of the CCNA, and today is marketing. It's the best program out there for networking fundamentals. It changed my life, it changed your life, it's changed everyone's life. I've talked to Duan Lightfoot, who's now Mr AI. You talk to anybody who's just starting out or at the top of the mountain. Ccna is where you start in networking. Um, and and I believe that I know that you're a big, uh proponent of labbing I love your lab content. I I guess you might tip your hat to like hey, while you're doing your CCNA, do some type of labbing, even if it's track and pacer, I mean yeah that's.
Speaker 3:That's a good point.
Speaker 3:I will say like one of the things that helped me a little bit going into this particular role which is network integration, where I had to do a lot of hands on hardware stuff and be there in person with it and like messing with switches and routers and stuff did help me a little bit.
Speaker 3:It wasn't what helped me get the job necessarily, but it did help me like not have so much. Like I was able to build a rack of equipment because I'd sort of done a little bit of that before, whereas like if I hadn't done that then I would have been like kind of freaked out and, like you know, treading water or like trying to keep my head above water when I was doing it. Having built a little bit in my own lab at home helped me not be so like freaked out by that requirement in my own job. So that's just a note there. You don't have to have the physical hardware experience. I know that's not realistic for a lot of people and that's okay. But if you really want to get an edge, that could be something to consider more than you might normally for like any enterprise or data center role.
Speaker 2:William, I totally agree with that. So much the heart. Like getting your hands on hardware. It sounds trivial, it really does. But I've had, like when I have hired, like talking about, like drafting, younger, like inexperienced folks, or like our college intern program at one of the companies I was at. They would come in and they did virtual learning and stuff, and then we would go in the data center and we'd go through like racking and stacking mst cassettes, fibers, you know terminating some copper, like how to properly patch, and you know I'll clean everything up. It would like you'd see like all these light bulbs going on everywhere, that just it would like connect all these things that were not connected before.
Speaker 3:I can't explain it there's something about from your brain to your hands, to the thing it it does. It does light some things up, um, and that actually reminds me one more thing. I'm sorry I keep adding on, but in aerospace you're always gonna hit like a lower, like we're all familiar with the osi model. Right, physical layer is more than just cables, right? Like, if you can do a packet walk like pretty well, now I would challenge you, before you go into aerospace, do a frame walk and like start start with the phi and then go through the phi and then go to the mdi, like go all the way through it. If you don't know how to do that, that could give you a bit of a leg up as I don't know how to do that, aerospace, so yes, it most, most.
Speaker 3:You don't have to right, like most people don't, because you don't need to. That's straight up well, and that's fine, right, because again, most, most network engineers quite honestly like don't need to know that, but if you're looking at aerospace, that is something you may want to look into is like you might be programming for electrical right, or you'll at least have to be so close to it that you're not programming it, but you're almost doing it right.
Speaker 3:Like, like, learn what a phi register is. What does that mean? Uh, and like, what does an asic actually do? Right, can you ask questions of somebody at cisco about whatever this new ASIC they have is, if you don't know the difference between a FI and an ASIC? Or what is SGMI? What is that? What does MII stand for? Learn all of that, right, if you really want an edge. That's all stuff.
Speaker 1:I I'm laughing because you and I used to talk and you would ask me questions and I'm like holy crap, Because they're things I had never thought of. And I asked some of the most brilliant people I knew and they were like whoa, Because?
Speaker 3:you don't have to.
Speaker 1:But you're right, but it's fascinating and if you're curious, and if aerospace values these, what seem to be off the beaten path skills, yeah, you have to be able to break.
Speaker 3:Something like if you're going to find because most of the time on networks like this, they're going to be like the only network in the entire world like that- right like I can say confidently there's no other network like the one I work on absolutely not right.
Speaker 3:so if you are going to be ready for that, you need to be able to like break down a protocol to its very base like how, what's the timing like on this very specific? You know how you go into like I don't know the 802.3 standard. If you haven't done that, start learning how to do it and then look at the like timing diagrams in there. How many nanoseconds does it take for this one particular signal to be sent out?
Speaker 1:You've got to buy that ethernet book with the octopus on the.
Speaker 3:Yeah on the. Yeah, it was a good book. It is, it is. Yeah, that's exactly it. Yeah, like, just learn the low level stuff that you never would have thought to learn and you're gonna have an edge in interviews, right never ends.
Speaker 1:You told me about link pulses and auto negotiation the one thing I can do with an oscilloscope but whoa like really, I thought I knew a lot, Like you never know at all and somebody always knows more. And you discovered that some vendors say when you turn auto negotiation off, that it's off and Lexi is like bullshit. Just because you turn it off, I still see your fast link pulses. Your auto negotiation never turned off. Like I don't even know if they know that.
Speaker 3:Honestly, yeah, because I have asked several vendors no, that, and they were like what?
Speaker 1:and then they gave me like the hardware engineers who like design that platform that are that are responsible for refreshing it every couple of years. Lexi walks in and she's like yo, I turn auto neg off and it doesn't turn off like that was not true. Want me to show you?
Speaker 2:I have. I have like a normal network engineer in there like think about asics, like the we're going to look at like the spec sheet and that's it. We don't go beyond the spec sheet. Usually we don't have to, but how?
Speaker 3:much time does it take for that asic to make a decision? And can you rely on that every time? Right, like that's the kind of level of questioning that you need to have. And like, again, I'm not saying that you should know this already. If you you're expecting to get an error, you won't know it, like there's no way you will know it. But if you can just get used to thinking like that and sort of explore a little bit of this here and there, look at some white papers or a standard or whatever, that'll get you into the mindset of like, okay, well, what actually happens when a frame arrives from the, from the wire right at the phi? What does the phi do with it? And are there sub layers in there and what do those sub layers do?
Speaker 1:and is it different for this flavor of this protocol versus this flavor like just started out on something magical, the mindset I was just thinking of, um erica the dev, and she's I'm going through her um automation you know youtube that she's doing and she starts out with the mindset like, listen, this, like coding, is a complete different mindset.
Speaker 1:Dev is a different mindset, which is why it's really hard for a lot of network engineers. It's a completely different mindset and I think that that's brilliant what you're saying, that if you're interested in aerospace and you're studying for ccna and all that stuff, you, if you can start to get that mindset, you know like what, what are these things? And like, because I I've never had that and the more I talk to you, I'm like whoa, like it is a whole world unto itself and you can dive in and that'll really help you in an interview if you can well at least talk about some of the things that that you just touched on you're talking about going deep in one area too, though, because, like most network engineers nowadays are I don't want to say I hate saying most, but a lot of folks just generalist in a sense.
Speaker 2:Like they're generalist because they have to be they're kind of deep in a lot of different areas, but you like the work that you do. You're very deep in a very specific area, yeah, and there's something really awesome about that well, yeah, and there's no.
Speaker 3:No shade to generalist like you have to do what you have, the opposite of what they're asking for, right, like you gotta know cloud.
Speaker 1:You gotta know networking. You gotta know cloud. You gotta know some programming you better know pipelines networking. You got to know cloud, you got to know some programming. You better know pipelines. Like, now, you got to know AI. Like it does seem like it's going more generalist, but here's. Xe who's going deep on really cool stuff, and I don't think you're going to be a generalist and succeed in aerospace networking at least.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you can go in as a generalist, that's fine, right? So don't be afraid if you feel like you're a generalist now. If you don't want to, yeah, it's fine. But you just have to go in knowing that that's what's going to happen. Is you need to start, you need to become an expert on your network and no other network, and you kind of need to like I know I said get the fundamentals and you do need those, but then you have to be able to set those aside and go all right so what's this weird thing doing right in front of me? And be able to work with those in tandem, if that makes sense. And you have to be able to explain some of those concepts to other engineers who are not network engineers, but electrical engineers, mechanical engineers, software engineers, who will think they know networking. But don't necessarily Shots fired, shots fired Never.
Speaker 1:All right, lexi, in respect of your time and poor may behind you, who has absolutely had it with us. Thank you so much for your time. Um, I love that you came on. Thank you, I learned so much thank you for having me.
Speaker 3:It's been, yeah, it's been so wonderful to see you, andy, and meet you, william, or just chat with y'all. Thank you so much for having.
Speaker 1:This is a great conversation.
Speaker 2:William to me too. Thank. This is an epic conversation. I learned a ton.
Speaker 1:I still want to be. Oh, what's next for Lexi? Oh for me. Are you an astronaut yet? Well, my plan.
Speaker 3:Don't tell anyone but my plan is to hitch a ride on the next New Glenn launch. So I'm going to crawl in there and just kind of snuggle up into security.
Speaker 1:She's gonna go in the.
Speaker 3:She's gonna go in somebody's suitcase yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna launch, I'm gonna launch. No, I uh, I love my job. I'm having such a great time, it is so hard, so, but, um, we're gonna be. I'm actually moving into a slightly different role, still integration, that's about all I can say, but it'll be same rocket, similar stuff. But you know, we are eventually probably going to look to expand our team a little bit. So if anyone out there wants to move to Seattle area, keep an eye on the website.
Speaker 1:I know I could have looked this up, but is your launch schedule public, Like do we know when the next launch is around?
Speaker 3:I think our CEO has announced what did he say. I can only repeat what he said.
Speaker 1:I'm sorry. I know I should have looked it up. I'm not asking you. I'm sorry.
Speaker 3:No, it's okay.
Speaker 1:I'm looking forward to it. I mean, that's just space, right, like you can't control weather and all that stuff.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean sometimes we'll scrub because of weather and stuff like that, but he said Dave Limp, Dave Limp, our CEO, has publicly said that we will launch New Glenton no later than August. That is the public thing that he has said.
Speaker 1:So I can this year. Okay, so we should see another launch this year maybe?
Speaker 3:wow, that's amazing and they won't tell us like what's in the payload or anything that's all like on the dl and um, sometimes they'll say it, yeah, sometimes they won't.
Speaker 1:I'll look at it, I don't it's not fair to ask you, but I'm, I'm fascinated with yeah, it's fine.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm sorry I'm super.
Speaker 1:I'm super excited for the mars stuff well, you know I can't.
Speaker 3:I can say this we're very focused on the moon right now. You can look up some public stuff about our relationship with NASA and stuff like that. So you know, keep, keep your eyes out. Go to the moon, thanks.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much, william. Always a pleasure For all things. Art of NetEng. You can check out our link tree at linktreecom. Forward slash. Art of net inch. Check out the discord server. It's all about the journey. There's a bunch of wonderful folks in there, studying, doing things, talking about cool stuff.
Speaker 1:I didn't have a community in the beginning and it was a hard slog and the people around me were telling me I was wasting my time, money and effort studying for the ccna. Uh, turns out that wasn't true, and then I found a community of like-minded people who were like you're doing a thing. This is great, don't give up. And it's really made all the difference in the world. It's been a much more pleasant journey finding my people, including these two wonderful people who have joined us on this episode. So thank you so much. This was amazing and we'll catch you next time on the Art of Network Engineering podcast.
Speaker 1:Hey folks, if you like what you heard today, please subscribe to our podcast and your favorite podcatcher. You can find us on socials at Art of NetEng and you can visit linktreecom. Forward slash. Art of NetEng for links to all of our content, including the A1 merch store and our virtual community on Discord called. It's All About the Journey. You can see our pretty faces on our YouTube channel named the Art of Network Engineering. That's youtubecom forward slash Art of NetEng. Thanks for listening.
