I use analogies. Just how my brain works…. and how I sometimes learn and teach. Token-ring source-route bridging analogy was “breadcrumbs thru the network”. Analogy for DLSw+ was a boat getting the breadcrumbs over water between 2 islands.
I think I like analogies cause…. to be superbly honest… when I came to work at Cisco back in 1996 I only knew SNA. I did NOT know IP. I was quickly immersed into learning IP. But I mean seriously… using acronyms to explain other acronyms you don’t understand? Don’t get me started!
Ready to play? Yea yea… my brain jumps around with varying analogies. If one doesn’t hit ya maybe the next will. 🙂 Happy nerding!
Waze on Steroids
Imagine you own a rental car agency with 2 locations across town from each other. Your employees are constantly driving the cars back and forth between the two locations to balance out inventory.
If the employees hit issues during the drive (potholes, glass, mud, sand, dirt, major traffic, construction) this is going to cost your company.
So you can see how knowing what is going on via the varying paths between your locations is critical to your business. Knowing not just that there is an alternate path between the 2 locations, but also knowing what the exact path (including the lane you’d be in) is like on that road.
Then… making an intelligent decision based on that information prior to each trip.
Dad’s “IWAN” Definition
Gotta say that my Dad is probably my #1 biggest fan of my web page. So one day while we were visiting and having dinner together he asks what “IWAN” stands for. He said he knew that the WAN part was wide area networking and what that meant. But what was the “I” part?
I paused and thought for a moment how best to explain it…. when suddenly I heard my Dad asks “does it stand for ‘Intermittent’?”
ROFL! I started laughing so hard I couldn’t answer the question.
IWAN is Intelligent Wide Area Networking to help you with your already existing Intermittent Wide Area Networking. 🙂
The Car Analogy – Road, Tires, Engine
The Road – this is your physical path. Your current routing and forward between your two end points
The Tires – this is the DMVPN.
The Engine – this is the Intelligent Path Control
So…. here’s the question. When you have “problems” on the road… is it typically the fault of your tires or of your engine? Or is it typically something else entirely?
Yup…. you know it! The person behind the wheel. The steering. Which for us means the underlying routing… NOT the DMVPN or the PfRv3.
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