Bornhack is next week and we are very excited. We have been discussing and planning, and now we will hit reality and see that our plan must be changed - yes, no battle plan survives first contact.

last status update included a pearls-on-a-string design, which noone likes, but equipment forced it upon us. Since then we have struct gold, and now we have more fiber than we need. The NOC map does not reflect this yet, but we have an internal design with a north ring and a south ring, and all POPs have redundant fiber.

Decisions and current work:

  • We are confident that we need, and we will have a really nice core with servers, routers and switches in R31. Since the NOC map is not updated, the bring list is also out of date.
  • We have talked with John the wifi guy, and we are going with the 4 SSID wireess design, whih resembles what we had last year. The logical network is here - it, too, needs updating but is mostly correct.
  • GC supplies an extra box. Internally called “GC magic box” since they apparently ship fibers with MX connection, which is used by TV stations and not by network people.
  • Switches will be HP switches and Arista in the core. We have a mock setup with configs, so we are ready to start rolling out.
  • We have 11 people on the NOC team. That is very cool, and, personally, I’m planning some sort of NOC team introduction to all the cool equipment, design and whatnot.
  • We will look into the feasability of having a NOC DECT phone with someone responsible for answering it within reasonable work hours.
  • We have made a design for the POP boxes. It is our own design and we are currently lasercutting them. A more detailed description with pictures will come later.

Major things before we start

  • Finish POP boxes: cutting, paint, plastic and so on
  • DHCP and monitoring server configurations, and general R31 installation.
  • POP+fiber roll-out and general testing
  • Wifi setup
  • NOC team work during bornhack definition and decision
  • Mate/beer/chips and celebration on a preparations well done on thursday.