Lol - I enjoyed this closing paragraph on Ivan Pepelnjak's post on reaching off-subnet nodes in IP and CLNP, talking about historical "hacks" for IPv4 hosts to auto-discover routers on a LAN: blog.ipspace.net/2025/03/comp...

Some happy news: I passed the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT) N5 exam :) It's the beginners level cert. 800 words, 100 kanji (Chinese characters), 50 grammar points. Nothing difficult to most people - but 2nd languages do not come naturally to me, so it was a real challenge. I'm relieved!

I wasn't able to attend this conference, but I'm excited to watch some of these videos. Lots of great topics on offer. Take a look:

I see 1000028 IPv4 prefixes. This is 240 more prefixes than 6 hours ago and 970 more than a week ago. 61.78% of prefixes are /24.

It's a few years old, but I just discovered a super cool set of gacha (Japanese capsule toys) for a miniature rack of routers and switches. A forum user called "Agg" has posted extensive photos. Well worth a look: forums.overclockers.com.au/threads/mini...

Packets that don't receive a reply to ping comnand aren't truly lost; they briefly enter a low-latency parallel dimension where time flows differently. Occasionally a stray "lost" packet will reappear days or even weeks later. This phenomenon is known as the "Lost Packet Dimension".

I love every video Cathode Ray Dude makes. His most recent one is of great interest to network engineers. He tells the history of 80s and 90s internet connectivity, exploring ISDN, leased lines, and the advent of ADSL. www.youtube.com/watch?v=ympj...

In addition to the famous 2001:db8::/32, Today I learned that there's now a second IPv6 prefix that is reserved for documentation: 3fff::/20. Lol, I'm only seven months late to the party on this one! datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc...

Oh my, this is brilliant - someone edited an orchestra to make it sound like they’re doing a live performance of a dial-up connection. If the comments are to be trusted, it's accurate! youtu.be/wuN-bW_zS0Q?...

When you study a new skill like network engineering, as you move onto the advanced pieces, you might find you forget the basics - because you're not thinking about them as much. This is normal. You're not stupid. You're not doomed to fail. There's a lot to remember, and it's all part of the journey.

I've been a fan of Japanese pop culture since 1995. Many half-hearted attempts along the way to learn the language. Recently started genuinely trying. Currently at the expert beginner stage, lol. I know enough to be dangerous, but no way near enough to be useful. Approx 150 kanji, 800 words.

I received a lovely email today from someone who discovered my blog post on Class of Service (aka QoS) in Junos, and said it helped them understand the config. Well, I'll definitely use that as a chance to share the post again! Hopefully it'll help you too: www.networkfuntimes.com/how-to-read-...

In this week's N Is For Networking (a podcast for new networkers), we discuss the default gateway. How does a host know when a destination is local & when it needs a gateway to forward traffic on instead? We keep the answer simple without dumbing it down.

KRAZAM is back with another brilliant sketch. This time: artisanal data collectors. www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDr6... It's joyous nonsense. Once you're done, check out their sketch "IETF Celebrates The Standards". Easily one of my favourite things on this otherwise-cursed internet. Absurd genius.

Nobody Ikes CAPTCHAs so thanks to Guillermo Rauch, who created a Doom classic video game based one where once you kill 3 monsters you are human. doom-captcha.vercel.app

REMINDER:

When folks talk about segment routing, it's often in regards traffic-engineered paths. Personally, I really like segment routing (specifically SR-MPLS) as an LDP replacement - which is to say, a full mesh of auto-created shortest-path LSPs, but with 100% topology coverage for backup paths.

Considering my follower count has risen 10x, I should probably say hi! I'm Chris. I use my website to teach networking with "jokes" and "mandatory fun". I focus on Junos/Juniper, and on service provider tech (BGP/MPLS). Here's an example post you might like: www.networkfuntimes.com/a-complete-b...

For New York mag, I wrote about the slop economy nymag.com/intelligence...

The IETF working group for IPv6 maintenance is called 6man. Despite my repeated emails, they REFUSE to acknowledge whether 6man is related to Five Guys. Reader, I promise you: I will not let them dodge this question.

NEW POST: After many months of work, my four-day instructor-led SR-MPLS course is now live! Plus, Krzysztof Szarkowicz has written some great blogs introducing SRv6. Want to find out more? Clicky-click: www.networkfuntimes.com/my-new-sr-mp...

Musk is a thieving little shit. Automatically signing everyone up to the "steal my work" setting, not notifying users, and hiding the opt-out so you can't even do it on the app.

Jeff and Drew! What a combo. I extremely highly recommend that you sign up to this.

Lol so I don't know if this is common in math(s) or not, but the original spec for the shortest-path first (SPF) algorithm in 1978 used the term "son" and "father" to describe one node going to another apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA...

"Fun" game: If you ever study SR, look out for the phrase "Segment Routing leverages the source routing paradigm". It's the first sentence of many RFCs—and it also appears in *tons* of vendor docs, blogs, training, etc. One person wrote it, and countless many others have copy-pasted it exactly.

Today I polished up my two-part intro to MPLS segment routing. I added some new facts, corrected some mistakes, and made it a little bit tighter. If you're curious about SR-MPLS, now is a very fine time to give it a read! Here's Part 1: www.networkfuntimes.com/mpls-segment...

At the request of no-one, I have joined yet another hell website. Did you know that there are more IPv6 addresses than there are people in Chicago? It's true! Try counting them if you don't believe me. Follow me for more networking facts. Or, don't. Your poor choices are your own to make.