jae

we love this(?????) for them

this is related to the CCNA Problem, wherein, one can follow all the courses and learn how to operate network equipment (routers, switches, etc) but you won't have the faintest idea how to do anything with a network until you've run face first into an enormous number of users all just Living Mas

people get super excited over servers and big network routers and stuff but those things do absolutely nothing that your raspberry pi or plastic d-link router doesn't, until you put 50,000 clients behind them.

it's literally impossible to see the capabilities at small scale - you send a ping through a $40 router, it takes .1ms. you send it through a $25,000 router, it takes .1ms. the difference is that when you put The Entire Microsoft Campus behind the second one, it stays at .1ms. "homelab" always confused me; sucking up gobs of power and creating tons of noise when you don't have any clients is just pointless. it just runs linux! you can type ls like anything else!

but when you actually need that gear, boy howdy do you become appreciative