The Rules of Networking
0. With networking, much like programming, numbering should always start with zero
1. It is always the networks fault until proven innocent. (helpdesk, end users, customers, developers perspective)
2. It is always the firewalls fault until proven innocent. (Network Engineers perspective)
3. Bourbon or Scotch are the drinks of choice
4. Nobody is ever been fired for buying Cisco
5. Python is our lord and savior. Scripting is encouraged and recommended
6. Never make a change unless you know the impact or ramifications of said change
7. Never test in production
8. Layer 8 of the OSI model is People. (End Users, customers, developers and network engineers)
9. Layer 9 of the OSI model is company/external regulations, rules, and restrictions
10. Layer 10 of the OSI model is money, budget, and funds
11. MS Paint is not for network diagrams
12. If it can break, it will break, unexpectedly, on a weekend/holiday
13. Fail-over and high availability are not suggestions
14. Change / Version Control is not a suggestion
15. You will get no praise when everything is working
16. Expect to only be needed when things break
17. Cloud simply means somebody else’s data center/network
18. Reliable, Cheap, Feature Rich. You can only pick 2
19. When things don’t work, escalate harder
20. Nothing is free of bugs/defects
21. Reserved for future use
22. Reserved for Catch-22s
23. Don’t use telnet in production
24. Unassigned
25. IPv6 should replace IPv4 any day now…
26. RFC1925 Truth 1 goes here
27. RFC1925 Truth 2 goes here
28. RFC1925 Truth 3 goes here
29. RFC1925 Truth 4 goes here
30. RFC1925 Truth 5 goes here
31. RFC1925 Truth 6 goes here
32. RFC1925 Truth 7 goes here
33. RFC1925 Truth 8 goes here
34. RFC1925 Truth 9 goes here
35. RFC1925 Truth 10 goes here
36. RFC1925 Truth 11 goes here
37. RFC1925 Truth 12 goes here
38. Somebody has always thought of it before you
39. Friday after 5pm local time until Sunday midnight local time are perfect change window times
40. There can always be more people on the conference call
41. There is always an SLA. (Service Level Agreement)
42. The five 9s are obtainable but it is never cheap. (99.999% Uptime)
43. TIAAA (There Is Always Another Acronym)
44. The maintainers and creators of this document are RFC2323 Compliant
45. There is no such thing as a random issue. There may be variables that make an issue intermittent but it is never truly random
46. Trust the actions or analysis of nobody. Trust but verify should be the approach
47. If you don’t have Wireshark installed; you are not a real network engineer
48. The packets don’t lie
49. Wireless might as well be magic
50. Nothing is every truly 100% secure
51. Everybody’s title is made up
52. One of the hardest parts of a network engineers day is the process of copying a file from a client to a server (see rule 2)
53. Documentation, while required, is never complete or up-to-date
54. A minimum of two datapoints should be collected in order to properly point the finger
55 – 68 – Unassigned
69. Reserved for future use
Last Modified: May 18, 2019