Author Archives: Matthew Norwood

Tech Field Day 5

I’ve been fortunate to receive an invite to Tech Field Day 5 out in San Jose, California. The event takes place in February and will bring IT vendors and technical people together to talk about products from the various vendors … Continue reading

Posted in career, learning, vendors | Tagged | 2 Comments

Programming Bad Performance

Last week an interesting problem surfaced at work. An application engineer received reports of slow performance on a particular website and needed some help from my group to track down the source of the problem. This engineer had done some … Continue reading

Posted in efficiency, troubleshooting | Tagged , , | 11 Comments

Dealing With Knowledge Gaps

Inevitably, we are all going to come across things in our jobs that we are deficient in. Maybe we know a little about a certain topic, but we need to know more. Maybe we know absolutely nothing and need a … Continue reading

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Chasing the “Ah-ha!” Moments

Whenever I talk to people who are just getting started in networking, there’s a part of me that wishes I was in their shoes. I say that because I know several of the things they are going to learn or … Continue reading

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The Myths of IT – Part 2

See my previous post here for the first 3 “Myths of IT”. 4. More bandwidth will solve all your problems. – Bandwidth isn’t always the cure for traffic problems. You can add bandwidth all day long to a circuit, but … Continue reading

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The Myths of IT – Part 1

About 15 years ago, I started my journey through the wonderful world of IT. I realize I am not as old as this guy, but I think I have been around long enough to form my own opinions in regards … Continue reading

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The Most Interesting Man In The World

If you live in the United States(and probably Canada) and happen to watch even a small amount of television, you have probably seen those fantastic beer commercials from Dos Equis(XX) about the most interesting man in the world. They say pretty funny … Continue reading

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The Many Hats of the Network Engineer

Remember when the network field wasn’t so complicated? Think back to the early 1990’s. Wireless for enterprise users was in its infancy. Firewalls seemed to be a bit easier to administer. Virtualization was limited to the mainframe community. A T-1/E-1 … Continue reading

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Competing With Cisco

***Please note that these are my own thoughts and not those of my employer. First and foremost, I have to credit Jimmy Ray Purser from Cisco for putting the idea for this post in my head. Back in late April … Continue reading

Posted in cisco, vendors | Tagged , | 9 Comments

What Exactly Do You Do For A Living?

Once upon a time I wanted to grow up and be an astronaut, police officer, pilot, and cartographer. Well, as you can probably guess, I didn’t end up anywhere near those professions. Here I am neck deep in the world … Continue reading

Posted in career | Tagged | 4 Comments