I learned how routers really work from Ericsson's seminal video on the matter, The Good Warriors of the Net: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9XWxD6cJuY
Though I always thought the "router switch" was much more fun.
Though I always thought the "router switch" was much more fun.
In contrast with that, people from the "networking" world often look with despise to people who don't understand what they do and want to prevent them from learning, they love to just say what is wrong and never point to what would be right and why, they also will most of the times just keep saying they must hire someone to do the job instead of learning.
That is my experience on Networking Stack Exchange, on ##networking channel on Freenode and also the impression I have from a friend that deals with networking, although I try to not talk about it with him for the reasons above.
However, I have also contributed to Stack Overflow and managed IRC channels and servers. The negative traits you've described do correlate to the hostile attitudes endemic within many StackExchange and IRC communities. They are not correlated to my workplace experience of network engineers.
On the whole, network engineers are a cool bunch though. They’re often called in to make stuff work without any real background or understanding of wtf is going on in advance. As a profession, they don’t get the respect they are do.
Early in my career, when I did a mixture of systems administration and security, my mentor on both of those things was a super-chill, skinny-as-they-come mega-pothead. Exact opposite of a control freak.
Dude was wicked smart, though, and the security mindset that he helped me build has paid dividends over the years.
Personally, I went into management precisely because I worked for a few "control freak" types, and felt that I had a sort of moral duty to build teams free of that sort of environment, even if it meant that I had to swap my text editor for a calendar.
I know many other managers with a similar backstory. None of us want to be the PHB.
As an aside, if anyone reading this is looking at management: look to nudge, rather than control. We learn by making mistakes, and sometimes, you actually do need a report -- or maybe even the entire team! -- to make a mess and clean it up, because the process of doing so will make them stronger, and will benefit your organization in the medium-to-long term.
As with all things, there are trade-offs to be made and balances to be struck! But one of the biggest mistakes I see new managers make is investing the bulk of their energy in preventing mistakes, instead of building a team that can recover-and-adapt quickly.
(Also, a nit, which you might not have noticed: "respect they are due")
Or if they show up, it's counterbalanced by a giant number of nice programmers willing to help. While on the Networking StackExchange they are the only ones.
You haven't met enough programmers, then. :)
What does this mean?
Then towards the end... "the packet is recycled". What?
But I do remember AppleTalk causing issues more frequently on a network I helped manage that had radio studios with two Macs per studio, but mostly Windows PCs through the rest of the building.
That place also had a Macintosh 512K running its phone system until around 2010!
Also, with the ping of death, the only way to use it was to very noticeably crash systems -- not to secretly build a botnet or something, as might have been done with RCE vulnerabilities.
It wasn't super notable. What was more horrific was the amount of windows machines that had tcp ports for various windows services open to the internet that led to not only crashing but remote compromise and rootkits/botnet stuff. That went on for years and only got mitigated by people deploying routers with fw/Nat functionality.