So a real world example of obstruction is airplanes a pilot flying an airplane from the UK to the US
is not going to fly manually the whole way they're going to use autopilot that abstracts them from having
to check all the sensors.
Now in the old days they had to manually fly and then check every single sensor to make sure that they
were flying.
OK so check the altitude make sure that their altitude is right.
They had to check that I'm not a pilot so I don't know all the values but that it should constantly
check all the sensors to make sure that everything was okay but with autopilot they can say OK we want
to set the direction of flight from here to there at such an altitude and then autopilot just takes
all that information from all the sensors on the aeroplane and just adjusts the aeroplane flight to
that altitude.
So an airplane pilot doesn't have to keep flying at this altitude to make sure that the plane is always
at that altitude.
Aeroplane pilot can concentrate on other tasks high level tasks like checking with traffic control what's
happening checking the weather and making sure that there's no turbulence ahead.
And then if they see that there's a big storm or they told that there's a big storm ahead they can just
adjust autopilot to change the direction without having to manually keep control of the airplane the
whole way from London to Atlanta as an example or to California to San Francisco or whether they fly.
So the idea is the pilots do high level tasks rather than very low level tasks that makes flying a lot
easier
Tesla autopilot is a good example of abstraction where rather than a string low level tasks.
We give a computer the low level tasks and we can take care of high level tasks.
Now I mean this has been going on for years.
In the old days we used to drive and we used to have to check our speed the whole time.
So if the speed limit let's say in the UK 70 miles an hour and I'm driving on the motorway freeway freeway
highway whatever you want to call it I'm driving on the motorway in the UK I've got to make sure that
I keep my car at the speed of 70 miles as a maximum so I can drive slower but I can't drive over that.
That's a manual task.
I mean if I drive for three hours I've got to make sure that I am staying below that speed limit the
entire way.
But autopilot and technology has made that a lot easier.
So now I'm a lot of cause I can just set the car at that maximum speed and the car will maintain that
speed.
I mean Tesla's autopilot has taken us to the next level where I can say OK I want to go from London
to Birmingham as an example.
Well if you don't know where that is let's say London to Scotland.
So I want to drive up through through that to the north of England and then to Scotland to Edinburgh
as an example long drive for the U.K. that is not too.
Probably not long for people in the US but the idea is I can put the destination into the satnav as
we would call it in the UK and it will then work out the best path to get there will the best route
to get there.
So I mean that's a ready machines doing a lot of the high level or should I say low level work for me
rather than me having a map and trying to work out the best path.
I mean that's what we do with the CLIA we are manually configuring stuff at a very low level rather
than doing that let's abstract ourselves from doing low level configuration and do clever stuff and
let a machine do the low level tasks.
So Tesla autopilot will set the speed will set the direction can change lanes it can keep me within
the lane it can do all the kind of stuff that we as humans used to have to concentrate on doing for
three hours or six hours or seven hours what high however long we driving.
I mean think about it you're driving long distance you've got to constantly be awake you've got to constantly
judge the distance to the car in front of you you've got to constantly judge which way you on the lanes
make sure that you were in lane you've got to constantly make sure that if the road turns that you turn
properly within your lane judging all the other cars on the motorway or freeway with you there's so
many little things that you've got to take care of but rather than doing that why not let the machine
do all of that then you can relax and be there when something goes wrong.
So the idea with automation and program ability is let's get the machines to do the low level stuff
and then we get involved when we need to not constantly keeping track of are we in the right lane or
we're going the right speed all that kind of stuff.
Or rather let a machine do low level boring manual tasks that we have to do over and over again.
So if it's a menial task that can be automated let us automate that task.
Machines are really good at doing repetitive stuff so that's the word I was looking for.
If it's a repetitive basic task let a machine do that.
Like if we have to configure a villain on a thousand switches to use a crazy example let the machine
do that rather than me telling leading to every machine and a V A SWITCH sorry and configuring the villain.
Let me credit python script and then just let the machine do that but if it's more intelligence stuff
like deciding should we had that villain or deciding who should talk to who we as humans would make
that decision we would apply the policy and then let the policy apply our intent on the networks I intent
would be.
OK finance department and sales department can't talk to each other.
There could be constant traffic from this villain or group to this group.
We have to stop using the term villain because villains are not necessarily used in all implementations
but say this group to this group they can't talk to each other but I'm not going to go into the network
and manually type that into all the devices I'm going to tell the controller This is what I want and
that's the intent that's then applied onto the network as a configuration.
I don't have to manually go into the devices and do the configuration.
My intent is this group can talk to this group.
Now we apply this policy on the controller that then pushes it out to the devices as a configuration
so we abstracted from manually configuring things.
Just think of where the world is going.
We are doing automation more and more with cars self-driving cars aeroplanes have been doing it for
years.
So we've got auto pilot on airplanes.
Pilots don't constantly check the gauge to make sure that they are at the right altitude.
They let autopilot put them at the right altitude.
So they will set it in autopilot.
This is where we need to fly.
This is the altitude that we need to maintain autopilot will do that for them so that they can concentrate
on high level tasks.
That's where we're going with network automation.
You could accept it.
This is the way it's going to go.
You manually configuring stuff is not the future.
If you want to work on your future then spend time learning the stuff.
Now autopilot won't take care of every situation.
Just like network automation won't take care of every situation.
There are times when a human has to get involved a pilot if a plane is coming towards him shouldn't
be trying to configure the airplane using autopilot.
You should grab the controls of the plane and move the plane out of the way.
If there's a fire in your network fire.
If there's something going wrong in the network you as an engineer need to jump in and fix it.
If auto pilot on a Tesla is doing something wrong we need to grab the steering wheel and correct autopilot.
So Tesla's as an example want you to keep holding the steering wheel to make sure that you're alert
and that you haven't fallen asleep.
So I mean you see there's all these kinds of crazy youtube videos where guys are overriding that.
It's obviously not recommended.
The idea is let auto pilot do the mundane repetitive boring tasks but you might get an alert when you
have to jump in and fix something or correct something something has changed something has gone wrong.
You have to get involved.
So you still need to understand networking to resolve issues when they do happen.
Networking skills are not going to go away we still need networking skills for enterprises for the data
center for the cloud networking skills are still required just the way we do things are going to be
different.
I mean I'm quite old so I remember the days where I used to have to drive with a map.
So in the UK we had a to z maps or ATC for my American friends.
So we had this map these books that you would go and buy in the shops and then you would plan your journey.
And I remember going into London and it was a nightmare.
London is not like South Africa or like the US where the roads are neat blocks.
So because of history the roads are like windy and small.
And it's it's not easy to navigate as it is say in the US or in South Africa.
So it was a nightmare with an 80s at trying to look in a book trying to drive.
I mean that's illegal so someone would have to help me so they would have to try and give me directions
and my wife would want to kill me because we would drive past the street and say we just composed the
street and she would try and find it in the book and it was a nightmare.
So much easier to use satnav.
So I put in my destination and I'm told way to go and if I miss a street it automatically recalculate
and says OK you're supposed to turn right there but you've missed that in go another two streets and
then turn left or turn right and you'll get back onto track.
So let the machines do that kind of stuff so that we can concentrate on high level tasks.
I mean the amount of stress trying to drive in London with a book map rather than satnav was crazy.
I mean pilots in the old days trying to draw a fly should I say for hours and hours manually now they
don't have to do that.
Today we still drive a lot of us with cars that don't have Tesla autopilot but you can imagine where
this is going to go in 5 10 20 years where more and more cars would have autopilot.
So we can rest while we're driving rather than the whole time trying to monitor everything.
I mean we are today monitoring networks manually in many cases and then we having to fix things Let
the machines do that let the machines do the mundane boring repetitive stuff so that we can concentrate
on the high level stuff.