Radia Perlman Talk on TRILL and Spanning Tree

I found this YouTube Google Tech Talks presentation by Radia Perlman. She is often referred to as the "Mother of the Internet". She invented the spanning tree algorithm. She also invented concepts that made "link state routing" stable, scalable, and easy to manage. The protocol was adopted and renamed IS-IS. She is credited as creating the original concept of TRILL.

Her presentation is titled "Routing Without Tears; Bridging Without Danger". She discusses the creation of spanning tree, link state routing protocols and finally TRILL or Transparent Interconnection of Lots of Links. Those of of working with network infrastructure and Cloud Computing can really appreciate everything she has done.

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The Best Solution is the Simplest Solution

As a consultant I am sometimes brought into, shall we say, challenging situations. Some situations are primarily politically challenging, others are technologically challenging.

Today I have met a technically challenging situation. I am working on a network that is not, on the surface, much different than many others. In this case, the problem is someone has, from the technology or geek standpoint, created a very complex network. We have OSPF, EIGRP, and static routes. OSPF and EIGRP redistributing each other, and each redistributing static routes, plus back door links.

Now this environment had some challenging networking issues to deal with. However I am thinking of my favorite philosophical law called  Ockham's Razor. "It is a principle urging one to select among competing hypotheses that which makes the fewest assumptions and thereby offers the simplest explanation of the effect."

Sometimes the best solution is the simplest.