I was pasting a big section of a router configuration today and even though I wasn’t getting any errors, I decided it would be worth comparing what the router was going to load to what I had pasted in. This is just a tiny part of the 700+ lines I uploaded, but it shows the problem.

Have you searched for how to downgrade a QFabric installation? No? Go ahead and try it. The first listing looks promising, but it’s for the bootloader, not the OS. The 2nd listing has a interesting item in the description on Google - “Note: Downgrading software on a QFabric system is not supported.”

Last week, as I worked with a customer to test 40 and 100 Gigabit per second Ethernet connections for their new Data Center core, I started remembering some other deployments of new interfaces I’ve gotten to work with. I remember when we were turning up some of the first 1 Gigabit per second Ethernet connections at Level 3 Communications back in 1999 and 2000 when it required burning an entire router line card for just one port (What do you mean autonegotation with the same vendor fails but it succeeds when connected to another vendor’s gear?). Later we turned up some of the first OC-192 router interfaces, again, only one port per slot. At the time one of my colleagues talked about how even though 10 Gig Ethernet and then 100 Gig Ethernet were the obvious headlines, there was a value to using 40 Gbps Ethernet as an achievable intermediate stop between the two. I would imagine he didn’t know how close to the terminal that stop would come until 40 and 100 were released as one standard.

I was watching the video on “The dazzling glory of San Francisco’s 25,000 LEDs—now on video” when I noticed where it says “Each LED is individually addressable over an Ethernet, copper wire, and fiber optic network”. What a tempting prize to hackers. I’m really hoping that this is not available over any remote network, but I’m assuming it’s connected somewhere. I guess it’ll be fun to see if it gets hacked over the next two years.

Wired gives this the headline “You Don’t Want Super-High-Speed Internet, Says Time Warner Cable”, but I think I’ve given it a more accurate title.